


How to become a man

by liketheroad, mockturtletale



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-19
Updated: 2012-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-14 13:42:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/837526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketheroad/pseuds/liketheroad, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mockturtletale/pseuds/mockturtletale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Kaner gets spontaneously de-aged into a six-year-old, and he and Tazer both have a lot of growing up to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to become a man

**Author's Note:**

> All credit goes to C for this story. She inspired it and made writing it the most wonderful experience ever. ♥ ♥ ♥

When Johnny walks into the locker room the first morning he’s been cleared for contact and sees a small, blond child standing in a pile of Kaner’s gear and drowning his practice jersey, he takes a startled step backwards and blurts, “Is this a joke?”

It’s been awhile since he’s had to ask - he’s gotten way better at identifying jokes even if he still has trouble laughing at them when they’re directed at him - but Johnny figures this has to be some prank about Kaner regressing back to his old immature ways now that Johnny’s back to reclaim the leadership reigns. 

As usual, where pranks are concerned, Johnny’s money is on Sharpy, even more so than normal in this case, because of how much perverse and uncalled for glee Sharpy has taken in the past couple weeks whenever reporting to Johnny how much all the rookies look up to Kaner. As if Johnny couldn’t already see that for himself or gave a single fuck about Kaner and his funtimes leadership strategy. Johnny knows who wears the “C” around here and it’s not going to be Kaner anytime soon, no matter how well he gets along with the rookies or how good a job he’s admittedly been doing showing leadership on and off the ice since Johnny finally accepted the reality of his situation and fessed up to the team doctors about his concussion. 

He’s fully prepared to stand stoically by while everyone laughs at him, folding his arms in preparation and expecting the real Kaner to spring out from behind Hayes or somewhere and smile in that dumb, proud way he has when he thinks he’s bested Johnny at something.

Johnny waits, but none of it goes like he expects.

No one’s laughing, for one. Instead, most of the guys are looking back and forth between the kid and Johnny, faces white with shock, and most importantly of all, Kaner stubbornly refuses to materialize. 

The kid, dwarfed in Kaner’s jersey and kicking his way out of the pile of pads and other gear he’s surrounded by, walks right over to Johnny and then looks up at him expectantly. 

Johnny blinks down at him, taking a wary step backwards, and the kid follows hot on his heels, the expression on his face becoming even more determined.

Johnny backs all the way into the door frame, hitting his shoulder painfully, and the kid presses his advantage, coming right up to Jonny’s feet and tugging at his sleeve. 

“Juice,” he says, tugging twice more. 

“What?” Johnny croaks, ignoring the hysterical crack in his voice halfway through the word. 

The kid frowns, scrunching his whole face, and says, “I want juice. The strawberry kind.”

“I don’t have any juice,” Johnny protests, and the kid’s bottom lip starts to quiver. Johnny’s pretty sure he’s faking it, but it’s terrifying either way. “I don’t - I’m sorry, but... Sharpy!” Johnny finally shouts in desperation, because at least he has a kid and probably knows where to get strawberry juice, and Jesus - where the hell is Kaner, this shit isn’t funny anymore.

Sharpy steps forward, but he looks as shaken up and confused as the rest of them. He takes a deep breath before saying, “Go easy on him, Tazer, that’s - that’s Kaner.”

“What the fuck do you mean that’s Kaner? That’s not fucking--” Johnny’s angry, and when he gets angry, he gets loud, but he cuts himself off abruptly, alarmed to discover that the kid wearing Kaner’s jersey like a dress is starting to tear up, his facing turning purple as he holds his breath, ready to burst.

“Don’t - wait - I’m sorry,” Johnny babbles frantically, dropping to his knees and grabbing the kid’s shoulders in a sloppy attempt at pacification. “It’s okay - no more yelling.” It’s not really a promise Johnny’s sure he can keep, but he’s used to making those where Kaner is concerned. 

Not that he believes this _is_ Kaner. Fucking Sharpy. He’s probably just acting this way to try and prolong the prank. 

The kid sniffs, and to Johnny it seems like there’s a decent amount of reproach in his eyes, like he’s judging Johnny for almost making him cry, but whatever, no one told Johnny he was going to have to curb his volume and swearing levels when he woke up this morning. He just wanted to play some fucking hockey, fucking finally. 

“I still want juice,” the kid says, and Johnny’s disturbingly reminded of the way Kaner gets super needy and demanding whenever he’s seriously hammered. 

Johnny stares into the kid’s wide, expectant blue eyes, and feels, just for a second, like his heart has stuttered to a stop in his chest.

“Kaner?”

The kid shakes his head, and for a moment Johnny’s dizzy with relief, but then he says, “Pat,” and pokes Johnny reprimandingly in the face. “I’m thirsty.”

Johnny swallows, trying to remember how to form words. 

The kid - Pat - _Kaner_ pouts for a second, but then smiles winningly, and adds, “Please?”

He’s all but batting his eyelashes at Johnny, and he scrambles off the floor in self defense, avoiding Patrick’s tiny, hopeful face.

“Guys?” Johnny says, casting a wide net, hoping for an explanation that will quiet the circus music in his head.

Sharpy rubs the back of his neck and says, “We all saw it happen. One minute he was fine, and then...” He waves a hand at Kaner and the trail of equipment between him and Johnny.

“How the -- heck did this happen?”

Sharpy shrugs helplessly, but Oduya steps up looking a mix of determined and uncertain, and Johnny can’t help thinking how weird it is that the guy has meshed so well with the rest of the team when Johnny’s barely even skated with him.

But then again, there are definitely weirder things to be focusing on right now.

“I think I might know,” he says, his voice soothing and respectful at once.

Johnny makes a mental note to be impressed when he can think straight again.

“This happened when I was playing back in Winnipeg, when Little missed those eight games.” He shrugs. “It wasn’t because of a bruised foot. We never figured out why it happened but--” Johnny starts to panic - more - but Oduya rushes on. “It went away! Same way it happened, just random, but... at least it probably won’t be permanent?”

“You had a teammate spontaneously de-age and you never tried to figure out why?” He’s raising his voice again, but Johnny can’t help it.

Oduya doesn’t let it phase him, though, and Kaner is too busy looking mutinously around the room for an alternative source of juice to care about how loud Johnny’s being, or at least that’s Johnny’s best guess of what he’s up to. 

“We tried,” Oduya says. “We just never got anywhere with it. But it wasn’t the first time it happened, at least, there were stories and--”

“It’s true,” Shawsy interrupts, coming to stand beside Oduya and Sharpy, half-dressed for the game, pads on, jersey off. “It happened to a teammate of mine when I was playing up in Owen Sound, we never figured out why either. But it only lasted a couple weeks.”

Johnny is finding this information the opposite of comforting. “Are you guys telling me there’s some kind of epidemic of hockey players turning into little kids and no one is doing anything about it? What kind of a - can’t the league put a stop to this?”

Oduya and Shawsy shrug in unison. 

“It’s not really something you talk about,” Shawsy says.

“Who would even believe us?” Oduya adds.

Johnny looks back down at Kaner, who is now sitting cross-legged on the floor and is building a tower of his gear, and inhales deeply, trying to regroup.

“I guess we’ll just have to say it’s an upper body injury.”

Oduya nods. “Keep it vague, day to day.”

Johnny shakes his head, and then asks, “Does anybody know where we can get some strawberry juice?”

\---

They end up giving Kaner red Gatorade instead, because at least it’s the right color, even if Johnny’s frankly terrified of what Kaner’s going to be like when the sugar rush hits. 

It takes some convincing, and Johnny picking him up and carrying Kaner to the bench on his shoulders, but Johnny talks Kaner into watching practice from there. As soon as he got his Gatorade, Kaner started to pick up on the fact that he was in a hockey rink, and he might not be his proper self, but he’s still Kaner, and Johnny’s not all that surprised that Kaner wants the puck as much now as he ever has. 

He accepts another Gatorade and a whistle instead, and stands on his feet on the bench, nose pressed against the glass. Apparently Q had something like this happen when he was coaching for the Avs, and he’s not happy about the situation, but he’s taking it about as well as he did Johnny’s concussion, which is comforting in a weird way, maybe just because it gives Johnny the opportunity to focus on his own guilt and frustration about getting hurt instead of freaking out over what’s happening to Kaner.

He can’t believe this is the kind of insanity that just goes on in the league and no one says anything about it, but then, Johnny’s always believed in the hockey gods a little too seriously to cast any stones when it comes to any of the other bizarre shit that gets done in the name of the Game. Even if he does still think pre-game rituals and superstitions are a waste of mental focus and are bound to be the thing that screws you up in the end, just by believing they matter. 

Ten minutes into practice, Kaner stages a brief mutiny and tries to charge the ice and grab Seabs’ stick away from him, but he’s returned to the bench and promises to behave when Johnny bargains for a real strawberry juice and another shoulder ride as soon as practice is finished. Kaner gets really into it after that, shouting along with the guys as they pass the puck, and when Johnny checks Shawsy on his way to the net, Patrick claps his hands and cheers.

Johnny steals the puck away from Shawsy and ducks his head, trying to hide his grin, face heating up and pretending not to hear the other guys laughing at him as Kaner continues to cheer. 

\---

Johnny tries his best to ignore Kaner for the rest of practice, and it’s easy enough, once he quiets down a bit. He’s always been good at tuning everything else out when he plays, it’s part of what makes Johnny so good at what he does, and it’s been so long since he’s been allowed to play properly everything else falls away pretty effortlessly. 

It’s so good to be back skating hard, pushing himself and knowing his team is pushing back, that he even forgets to panic about what the hell they’re doing to do without Kaner for however long it takes for him to turn back into himself again. He forgets until Q blows the whistle for the last time, anyway, and then Kaner blows his own whistle twice more, grinning when everyone stops and stares at him.

Johnny skates over to Kaner and he holds up his arms.

Johnny shrugs and lifts him up, hoisting Kaner over the glass. 

Johnny puts him down and Kaner takes a wobbly step on the ice and then grabs Johnny’s leg, wrapping his arms around his calf to steady himself.

Patrick says, “Fuck,” and then looks at Johnny proudly, like he’s expecting a pat on the head or some other kind of reward.

“Oh my god, did I teach you that word?” Johnny recoils, shaking his head in mortification. 

Kaner grins, still firmly attached to Johnny’s leg, and bobs his head enthusiastically, saying it again. 

Johnny covers his face with his hands, and ignores the round of hoots and applause that follows from the guys.

Jesus.

This is so much worse than the time he swore on national television and his mom called to yell at him about it every day for a week.

\---

They have a team meeting about Kaner’s situation as soon as everyone’s changed from practice, and Johnny’s finally grateful Q and some of the others have some experience with this, because if it fell to him to make a rallying speech right now, he’s honestly not sure he could manage it.

That’s never happened to him before, not even when he’d just lost nine straight.

Never mind being commanding and inspirational, it’s hard enough just to stop from picking up and running out of the room when Kaner sits down on the ground at his feet and attaches himself to Johnny by grabbing a fistful of Johnny’s jeans while Q is outlining what they’re going to tell the press and how they’re going to cover Kaner’s spot on the roster. Johnny tunes him out after the part where Q sighs and says, “At least both of you aren’t out at the same time,” like they planned this or something, and then goes back to telling Shawsy how much faith the organization has in him and how he just needs to stick to playing his game and fill in the tough areas and they’ll all be fine. 

There’s not much else to talk about, except what they’re going to do with Kaner until he turns back, and apparently Johnny’s the only one who thinks that needs to be discussed, anyway.

“He’s going to stay with you, isn’t he?” Sharpy says, shrugging, and looking around the room for support.

Everyone nods like this was a foregone conclusion, and as if to prove their point, Kaner gets up off the ground and climbs into Johnny’s lap.

Johnny makes a choked sound and struggles not to buck him off in surprise. 

Kaner looks at him, droopy eyed and already well into his sugar crash, by the looks of it, and says, “I’m tired.”

Johnny stares at him helplessly and then forces himself to take a breath. He gathers Kaner up against his chest, standing up and holding him around the the waist. Kaner squirms a little, and then loops his arms around Johnny’s neck, making it easier to carry him. His nose is pressed against Johnny’s neck, and it’s running a little bit.

Johnny’s surprised by how little he minds.

“I guess I’ll just...” He shrugs as best as he can while still holding Kaner in his arms, and tries not to think about how weird that sentence is, even just in his head.

“If you need help, call me and Abby,” Sharpy says, and then adds, “Actually, you should just call Kaner’s mom. She’s the one who had to deal with him the first time around. I bet she has some tricks for you.”

There’s no way Johnny’s calling Patrick’s mother and telling her that her son turned into a tiny child version of himself on Johnny’s watch, but he nods anyway, and then forces a confident, determined look onto his face, hoping it’ll be inspiring enough that he doesn’t actually have to say anything.

It works, everyone nodding back and looking bolstered, because Johnny’s got to catch a break sometime, he guesses, and he grabs his bag with one hand while holding onto Kaner with the other, and walks out of the locker room with as much dignity as he can scrape together with a half-dressed, pint-sized Kaner in his arms.

\---

Kaner falls asleep on the ride home, curled up in the backseat, and Johnny resigns himself to carrying him everywhere for the foreseeable future, because once Johnny’s parked his car, Patrick just blinks at him and holds out his arms again. 

Johnny’s suddenly and fervently glad he’s never been interesting enough for the press to stake out his place, because there’s no way he wants to explain the fact that he’s carrying a small child up into his condo along with his hockey gear, but luckily, his building doesn’t have a doorman and chances are the PR department will have a cover story put together by the time any of the security footage from the lobby gets leaked. 

Patrick’s mostly awake by the time Johnny lets them into his condo, and he jumps out of Johnny’s arms, immediately racing towards the TV, dodging between furniture and leaping onto the couch, springing off of it, and then tearing around rest of the apartment.

Johnny stands in the middle of the foyer and closes his eyes, waiting for the sounds of his belongings breaking, or worse, for Kaner to get upset again when he discovers there’s no strawberry juice in Johnny’s fridge.

This whole time he’s just been running on denial and adrenaline, but now, alone with Kaner, Johnny feels like he might need to have a bit of a hysterical cry or at least punch a wall for awhile.

Maybe he can get Kaner to watch some TV or something and lock himself in the shower for a little bit.

That’s a totally reasonable course of action given the circumstances, Johnny feels like. 

He’s still standing ten feet into his condo, eyes closed, when Kaner races back over to him and kicks Johnny’s shoe.

He’s barefoot, Johnny realizes belatedly, and still just wearing Kaner’s jersey, and probably nothing else. Johnny wonders if he had been cold before, in the arena. 

“We’re going to need to take you shopping,” Johnny says, putting his hands on his hips.

He sighs. Surely there’s someone he can call about that, right? Professional shoppers are discreet, aren’t they? They’d have to be, Johnny figures. 

Kaner just shrugs. “I’m hungry. And bored.”

Johnny almost laughs. These are pretty standard complaints coming from Kaner, no matter how many times Johnny’s told him it’s not his responsibility to feed and entertain Kaner just because he decided to show up at Johnny’s condo unannounced. 

“Do you want to play X-box?” Johnny asks, which is his go-to reply for such occasions. “I can make you a...” He thinks about the contents of his fridge. “Bowl of cereal?”

“Okay,” Kaner says, the same judgey way he always does when that’s the best Johnny can do, and Johnny crouches down, looking at him eye to eye.

“Do you remember who I am?” It’s kind of ridiculous he hasn’t asked sooner, but Johnny is doing the best he can here.

Patrick just shrugs anyway, not looking particularly concerned. “You’re Tazer.”

“You remember?” Johnny presses.

“That’s what everyone was calling you,” Kaner admits, and he bites his lip a little, starting to look upset.

Johnny’s not falling for that again, and he steels his heart, but Kaner stops pretty quickly, smiling sheepishly. 

“But you’re not scared of me? Or anything?”

Kaner scoffs. “No, that’s stupid.”

“Why?”

He shrugs and then leans up, patting Johnny on the shoulder, like he’s the one who needs to be comforted right now.

“Because you’re Tazer.”

\---

Johnny decides he’ll have to take Kaner shopping by himself. 

When it comes down to it he’s just not prepared to make a fool of himself in front of whoever he could ask to go with them. He struggles with shopping at the best of times, and he knows before he even really commits to the idea that this trip is going to have all the makings of his next great shame spiral. Better to embarrass yourself in front of a - 

“Hey - Pat - how old are you?” Johnny asks the living room at large, because he can hear the scritch of marker against the old contracts Johnny had given him to draw on, even though he can’t actually see Kaner. He’d sighed when Johnny had only been able to produce a box of black sharpies for his artistic adventure, but his unimpressed frown had given way to a gleaming wide-eyed awe when Johnny told him not to get any on the carpets because they’re permanent. 

“Permanent like _forever_?” Kaner had asked, looking between Johnny and the sharpies clutched in his tiny fists like he’d seen the face of god. 

“Permanent like ‘don’t draw on anything other than paper or I’ll have you permanently adopted by T.J Oshie,’” Johnny had said without thinking, but as it turns out Kaner wasn’t old enough to understand adoption or empty threats yet. Plus - 

“Tee-kay-lo-shee? What’s that?”

“Nothing you ever need to worry about, hopefully,” had been Johnny’s only answer, and Kaner had seemed satisfied to be distracted by markers and free creative reign of an entire stack of paper. There hadn’t been a peep out of him since, except for a quiet yet enthusiastic humming that sounded suspiciously like ‘Chelsea Dagger’. 

When Johnny asks him how old he is he surfaces with a questioning “Hmm?” though, his head appearing suddenly over the arm of the couch, where Johnny has been sitting contemplating absolutely nothing, because if he starts thinking about the ramifications of all of this now he’ll likely stop breathing. 

Kaner’s hair is all over the place, his curls swept to one side across his forehead but riotous everywhere else. He looks like a crazed child genius, and Johnny suppresses his urge to call him a poindexter. 

“How old are you?” he repeats. 

Kaner seems to contemplate the question, tilting his head to one side and touching a finger to his chin like this is something he can puzzle out. 

“... six?” he says finally, and Johnny feels like that shouldn’t be a question. 

“Six?” Johnny parrots back at him, hoping to prompt elaboration. 

“I … Six feels right? Five isn’t enough and seven is too big,” Kaner says, decisive. 

That’s good enough for Johnny. 

“Six it is, bud. Hey, are you tired? Feel up to a trip to the store?” 

Kaner’s eyes light up. 

“Juice! Strawberry kind! And purple for on weekends!” he says, and scrambles up over the arm of the couch to sit next to Johnny and bounce on the cushion beside him. 

“Sure thing, little man,” Johnny can’t help but say, smiling, because Kaner’s fucking adorable as an apparent six year old, and Johnny is well and truly screwed. For the record, he knows that even before he elects to take the tiny version of Kaner shopping, but he can’t seem to feel as truly doomed as he knows he is. Kaner’s grinning, and proudly showing Johnny how he didn’t get any ‘forever sharpie’ on his hands, and Johnny can do this, he can. 

\---

Johnny can’t do this. He _can’t_. 

The kids clothes section at Target is organized by sex, and then by age, and then by style, and it seems like a very organized and impressive system, a labor of love for whoever has to maintain this shit for sure, but Johnny feels like he needs a map. 

Kaner has been quiet so far. Johnny thought he’d fallen asleep in the car on the way over here but when he’d glanced back in the rear-view Kaner had been sitting with his thumb in his mouth calmly staring out the window. 

Johnny’s relieved that Kaner’s not as freaked out by all of this as _he_ is, but he hopes Kaner is only so quiet because he’s tired, and not because he’s scared of Johnny or disappointed in him as a temporary caregiver or anything. 

“Hey bud, you doin’ okay?” he asks, because better safe than hated. 

He slows the shopping cart to a stop and leans down with his elbows braced on either side of Kaner’s knees on the bar. He’s sitting with his butt in the seat but his feet kicked up over the edge because he didn’t like feeling trapped in. 

Kaner smiles up at him and nods enthusiastically. 

“Yep yep yep!” he says, animated when Johnny talks to him but otherwise content to just stare at everything around him, quieted by his fascination. This tiny version of Kaner is different from Johnny’s version in a lot of ways, but there’s something weirdly familiar about how he responds to Johnny, how he’s focused on him in ways he isn’t for anything else. 

Johnny nods, satisfied, and makes a move to head right into the heart of this clothes maze, but Kaner stops him by bringing his little hands up to rest over Johnny’s. 

“Are you okay, Tazer?” he asks, looking up at Johnny with genuine concern and curiosity, and okay, okay, Johnny has to be the best he can be for this kid - for _Kaner_ \- and if that means braving the world of novelty sneakers, then so be it. 

He says a quick prayer to the gods of hockey, wondering if there’s a saint for spontaneously de-aged teammates, and marches on into unknown and terrifying territory. 

\---

Grabbing clothes for Kaner proves surprisingly easy. As a six-year-old he’s far less attached to the notion that he’s going to look just great in horrible garments, so Johnny can be on board with his fashion choices as a small child in ways he’ll ever be for the terribly cut suits Kaner persists in wearing on game days. 

Kaner insists on hopping down out of the cart and picking up the things he can reach himself, and Johnny congratulates himself on only having one near heart attack when he turns around and he can’t see Kaner, but whatever kind of noise of alarm he emits drags Kaner’s attention back from where he’s standing staring up at a stationary display like he’s stumbled on the holy grail, and he returns to Johnny’s side, patting him clumsily on the hand and assuring Johnny he didn’t go far. 

Johnny grabs one of those devices for tying kids to their parents, just in case. Hopefully this whole mess will be righted before they have to make any more consumer pilgrimages. But still. 

Together they pile the cart high with little pairs of jeans and tiny sweat pants, kid’s chinos that Johnny insists on even though Kaner will likely never need them, just because they look awesome. They collect a small mountain of T-shirts, covered in all kinds of cartoon characters and superheroes that Johnny has no knowledge of, but Kaner is fiercely opinionated on. Some guys called Phineas and Ferb ‘rule’, apparently, while Ben 10 is declared decidedly lame. 

Johnny kind of hopes Kaner’s opinions are derived from some kind of latent little kid sixth sense about what’s cool, but when Kaner shoves a shirt crowded with strange and colorful cartoon characters up under Johnny’s nose some of them look suspiciously familiar. Johnny checks the tag and pulls up the browser on his phone, and ‘Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends’ was definitely not airing when Kaner was six years old. Not even when he was six _teen_ years old. Busted. 

Johnny wonders if he should be writing this stuff down, compiling a careful and detailed list of things he has to give Kaner shit about when he turns back. 

But then Kaner throws a look of contemptuous confusion at the Twilight section, and Johnny’s chest swells with affection for whatever part of this version of Kaner has yet to be tainted by the world and his sisters. 

Johnny doesn’t think they’re going to need actual pajamas since they’re all stocked up on sweats and T-shirts, baseball tees and shorts, but Kaner’s eyes light up when he finds some sets of plaid footie pajamas, a whole section of different colors and striped styles and Johnny mourns the fact that he clearly hasn’t de-aged far enough back to clear the beginning of his terrible, terrible taste in clothes. Plaid is the worst. But Jesus these pajamas are fucking cute. Johnny lets Kaner pick four pairs, any kinds he wants, but eventually they grab six because he just can’t choose between the navy blue and the color that looks exactly the same to Johnny but Kaner insists is a totally different shade. Johnny reaches for the red ones that Kaner can’t see or reach just before they round the corner, because seven is a good number, one for every night of the week. 

They make a quick stop in the underwear section, grabbing vests and more socks than an entire kindergarten class would need, because Johnny knows what Kaner is like for losing socks even when he isn’t six years old and has no legitimate excuse for that attention span. Johnny takes great delight in letting Kaner pick out the underwear that has the days of the week printed on them in bright, obnoxious colors, because grown up Kaner is never going to hear the end of that. 

When they get to the footwear section the place is overrun, the few people they’ve encountered since they arrived nothing on the crowd they find here. It’s kind of the center of the kids’ section, and there’s a small play area presumably to keep kids quiet while their parents navigate the serious task of perusing and choosing shoes for them. Johnny bristles. It’s late enough at night that he thought they’d be home free in terms of getting spotted, but now he’s not so sure. Kaner grabs his hand, clings to him in the face of so many strangers, and Johnny clings right back. 

A woman around Johnny’s age comes up to them, carrying a tiny baby in her arms, and she smiles at Kaner first and then at Johnny, when Kaner ducks to hide behind his legs. 

“What an adorable little boy!” she says, and Johnny breathes a sigh of relief because she says it genuinely, no trace of surprise or hint that she knows who he is. 

Damn right, he thinks, when his heart starts to beat again, Kaner is totally cute. 

“Uh … thanks,” he says, “that’s a … cute baby.” 

The woman grins at him, all blinding white teeth, and bounces the little girl on her hip. 

“She’s my sister’s kid,” she says, eyeing Johnny in the kind of way that makes him feel vaguely dirty. 

“Are you guys on a father-son outing?” she asks then, putting her free hand on Johnny’s hip for the pretense of leaning around him to talk to Kaner. Johnny had no idea this sort of thing actually happened in shopping centers. He’s so genuinely bewildered by this that he hasn’t got a clue what to do to get out of it. 

Kaner ignores the woman completely, shoots a hand out to grab two pairs of sneakers his size off the nearest shelf and tosses them into the cart, moving behind Johnny to grab his other hand and start tugging him backward away from the woman. 

Kaner to the rescue. 

“Yeah, and we have to be going,” Johnny says as he backs away, trying to sound apologetic or something other than freaked out. 

As soon as they get around the corner they both start walking a little faster. 

“She was scary,” Kaner says. “She had teeth like a shark.” 

“You said it, buddy,” Johnny agrees, and is so thankful for the save that he doesn’t comment on the light up sneakers Kaner had snuck into the cart. 

\---

Grocery shopping is a different story. Kaner seems to make dietary decisions based solely on how colorful the packaging is, and Johnny has let the little guy get away with a lot so far, but he won’t entertain compromises when it comes to nutrition. 

He has no idea how this works, whether what the kid version of Kaner eats will effect the adult version when it deigns to return home, but he’s not taking chances. They’re gonna have enough to compensate for when Kaner gets back without Johnny knowingly inciting a relapse in his sugar addiction. 

They keep it simple. Healthy cereals, except for one box of fruit loops that Kaner latches onto fiercely enough that Johnny’s afraid it will need to be surgically removed from Kaner’s hands until he agrees to put it in the cart, plenty of yogurt and fruit and snack-like things to keep Kaner going throughout the day. Johnny figures whatever he eats for dinner will be fine for Kaner too, and emails his meal provider to double up on everything starting tomorrow. Kaner wins the popsicle standoff and Johnny has no idea there were this many different kinds of juice, but all in all he feels like although he lost that and a few other battles, he ultimately wins the war. 

He gets his ass handed to him when they double back to the stationary section, but Johnny will happily spend a truly obscene amount of money on markers and paints and play dough and stickers and neon paper and glitter _everything_ , if it means they get out of here faster and Johnny can escape the clutches of the sexual predators that apparently hang out in grocery stores late at night. Before they leave he gets three phone numbers that he really, really does not want and is straight up asked out by a guy who he’d maybe have thought twice about refusing were it not for the fact that the second thing he’d asked Johnny had been whether or not he was ready to have more kids. 

Kaner gets more tired and cranky as the night goes on, finally threatening to bite that last guy, and by the time they head to the checkout his growls have pattered out to gentle snarls and his eyes are drooping. 

\---

Kaner’s dead on his feet by the time they get home from shopping, and for all that he does better than Kaner, on an average night out, Johnny’s not used to having to fend off so many advances while innocently going about his business at the mall, so Kaner’s not the only one. 

Johnny orders them some pizza because that’s what kids like to eat, he figures, and they’ve both had sort of a rough day, so they deserve to treat themselves. Patrick is still a bit cranky from tiredness, but Johnny narrowly avoids a crisis of tears by supplying him with one of the juice boxes they picked up and handing Kaner the remote.

It’s probably not the best child-care strategy, long term, but it’s going to have to do for now.

Johnny takes a five minute break to freak out in the bathroom, because he hasn’t had time for it all day and it’s _necessary_ , and then does a silent prayer thanking the hockey gods that at least they don’t have a game tonight. 

He goes back out into the living room to find Kaner happily watching NHL highlights on EPSN, and Johnny’s so proud of him for not picking a crappy cartoon or some other lame kid’s show that he goes right over to Kaner and sits down beside him, saying, “Good choice, bud.”

Kaner grins at him, and wastes no time plastering himself to Johnny’s side, tucking Johnny’s arm around his chest and putting his feet up on Johnny’s coffee table. He’s wearing some of the clothes Johnny bought for him, his socks striped red and blue. 

Johnny shifts a little so Kaner’s elbow isn’t digging into his stomach, and they watch the best goals from the past week’s games until the pizza arrives.

\---

Patrick eats his weight in pizza and then promptly falls asleep, mouth and hands still covered in sauce.

Johnny carries him into the bathroom and wipes Kaner clean, giving himself a bolstering mental pep talk about how this isn’t insane or creepy at all. He’s just taking good care of the kid, and anyway, it’s not like there’s anyone else. 

Sure, there are probably professionals of various sorts who would have things to say about their current situation, and Kaner’s mom might be more qualified for the job, strictly speaking, but again, there’s no way Johnny’s telling her about this until he’s fixed it, so that leaves him.

Kaner seems to like it that way, anyway, because he just smiles at Johnny sleepily and then wakes up a little, snapping out of his daze long enough to remember how excited he was about the pajamas they bought earlier, demanding Johnny go get them for him.

Johnny’s condo is a three bedroom, and one of the extra rooms is for working out when he’s too lazy to go all the way downstairs to the gym, but the other is a guest room which Kaner uses to change, and Johnny figures Kaner can sleep there, too. He’s six, apparently, and that’s old enough to sleep on your own, right? David used to crawl into bed with Johnny sometimes, even at that age, but they shared a room, and mostly it was so they could stay up later talking without their parents hearing, anyway. 

Johnny’s launching into a speech about how Kaner can call for him any time if he needs something from Johnny in the night when Kaner starts biting his lip again. Johnny really needs to set a better precedent about responding to that behavior sooner or later, but it’s not going to be right now, because he bends down after about two seconds, facing Kaner again and asking as gently as he can, “What’s wrong?”

Kaner glances behind him at the large, tall bed and then looks back at Johnny forlornly. 

“Is there a nightlight?” 

Johnny doesn’t have much experience with this sort of thing, obviously, and the Kaner he knows has always been fearless, but he thinks this is Kaner trying to be brave. 

“I’m sorry, buddy, but no, I don’t have one,” he admits, kicking himself for not getting one of those while they were out, too. 

“That’s okay,” Kaner says, like he’s trying to convince himself, and Jonny’s chest constricts.

“You could... I’m just down the hall, but if you wanted... my bed is pretty big?”

Kaner lights up, grabbing Johnny’s hand and flapping it around for a second in a strange parody of a handshake, and Johnny laughs, loud and kind of stupidly proud, because it’s nice, even though it’s strange and crazy, too, how easy it is to please this Kaner. 

“Okay then, we’ll bunk together,” Johnny says.

Kaner finds a way to beam brighter, and Johnny leads Kaner to his bedroom with Kaner holding onto his hand the whole way.

Johnny tucks Kaner into bed, shaking his head a little at the sight of him, footie pajamas and all, and then goes to the bathroom to brush his teeth, grabbing a pair of sweats and a faded Blackhawks T-shirt to change into on his way.

He keeps the door half open, just in case Kaner needs something, but when he gets back into the bedroom Kaner’s already asleep, curled up on Johnny’s side of the bed, his pillow trapped between Kaner’s tiny arms.

Johnny shoves down the strange rush of protectiveness and melancholy that swells up in his throat, and then goes to the guest room to steal a pillow from the other bed.

He slides into bed, trying not to disturb Kaner, but luckily his bed is king-sized, so there’s plenty of room left, even with Kaner hogging his side.

He lies on his back, trying to calm down enough to sleep, his heart suddenly racing again now that he’s alone with his thoughts. Kaner turns over in his sleep, unconsciously seeking out warmth, or maybe something else, because he ends up with his face smushed into Johnny’s arm, his fingers curling around Johnny’s shoulder.

It should freak him out more, maybe, but the fact that Kaner seems to be drawing comfort from his presence calms Johnny as well, and before long he joins Kaner in sleep.

\---

When he wakes up, Johnny holds his breath for a long moment and keeps his eyes shut, hoping against hope that when he opens them, Kaner will be normal, probably swearing a blue streak and demanding to know how the hell he ended up in Johnny’s bed. Unfortunately, when he finally makes himself check, Kaner’s the same as Johnny left him, tiny and swaddled in a pair of plaid pajamas, still curled up against Johnny’s side. 

Johnny doesn’t really know the protocol for waking up teammates who have spontaneously regressed to the age of six, so he settles for gently shaking Kaner’s shoulder and saying, “C’mon, bud, time to wake up.”

Kaner comes awake slowly, rubbing at his face with curled up fists and smacking his lips.

Johnny wonders if he’s thirsty, and has to hold in a hysterical laugh, thinking about how he’s never going to be able to look at juice the same way ever again. 

When his eyes finally open all the way, Kaner blinks at Johnny and for a second he’s afraid Kaner doesn’t recognize him, that they’re somehow going to have to start all over again, but then Kaner grins tiredly and says, “I have to pee.”

Johnny doesn’t bother trying to stop the laugh this time, and he says, “You don’t need my help with that, right?”

Kaner rolls his eyes dramatically and sits up in bed, saying, “No, I’m a big boy. I was just telling you so you’d know.”

That _almost_ makes sense, and between the fact that Johnny hasn’t had coffee yet and Kaner is still a six-year-old, Johnny figures they’re doing pretty good.

He waves Kaner off encouragingly, and he jumps out of bed, running into the bathroom and not bothering to close the door behind him.

Johnny flops back onto his bed, and stares up at the ceiling until Patrick’s finished, wondering how the hell this became his life.

\---

Breakfast is Fruit Loops and juice for Kaner and three cups of coffee and an egg-white omelet for Johnny, and Johnny tries to enjoy the semblance of normalcy that comes with sitting down to a meal with Kaner he knows Kaner shouldn’t be eating, even though it’s weird that he can actually get away with indulging Kaner, at least for today. Tomorrow they’re going back to the healthy regimen Johnny’s never been able to effectively enforce with Kaner as an adult, but sure as hell better be able to with Kaner as a first-grader. 

After they’re done eating, Johnny showers and Kaner takes a bath, and Johnny is pretty surprised by how easy it is to get him to wash, given how allergic to personal hygiene Kaner is an adult. The bubble bath Johnny produces from deep within the recesses of his medicine cabinet helps, leftovers from some promotional gift basket or another, but still.

Once they’re both dressed, he sets Kaner up with a stack of the drawing paper and markers they bought yesterday, and then starts making calls.

They have a game tonight, and then they’re going to be in New Jersey on the 27th. Johnny can’t really see taking Kaner on the road with the team just on the off chance he’ll turn back into an adult in time for the game, so they’re going to have to make some kind of arrangements for him while Johnny’s gone. 

He figures Kaner can just come to the rink with him for morning skate today and then they can bum around the house for the rest of day, or head down to the nearest playground or something if the weather stays nice. Johnny’s googling parks in his area for one that has a jungle gym or at least swings when his phone rings.

It’s some of their PR people, following up on his own call from a few minutes before. As long as Kaner’s like this, Johnny’s going to look after him as best he can, and even if he’s not going to take Kaner on the road with him, he’ll still be coming to home games and staying at Johnny’s place. If there aren’t pictures of him shopping with Kaner on the Internet yet, there will be soon, so they need a cover story, one way or another.

The best they’ve come up with is that Kaner is one of Johnny’s cousins, and he’s visiting because he loves hockey and his parents are having some problems at home. It’s pretty thin, and might be even harder to sell because it’s the middle of the school year, but Johnny figures they can just fudge Kaner’s age a little and say he’s only five and not in school yet if anyone asks. Not even Kaner seemed entirely sure about being six, anyway, so it’s not like it should be that hard to get away with.

Johnny thanks the two execs he’s on speaker phone with, asks them to check into potentially getting a discreet nanny to help out when he needs to be on the road, and then hangs up.

Kaner’s staring at him, marker on his cheek, his chin propped up on one hand. There’s a long blue stripe down his arm, too, and Johnny takes a closer look, not surprised that Kaner doesn’t so much draw outside the lines as forgo the page entirely. 

There are patterns and swirls all up and down Kaner’s left forearm, and there’s even what looks like a crude attempt at the Blackhawks logo in one spot. 

Johnny swallows down the rush of affection that threatens to choke him, and walks over to the table, leaning down to see what Kaner actually drew on his page, his hand on the back of Kaner’s chair. 

There’s some marker on the table, too, and Kaner looks from it to Johnny and then says, “Don’t be mad,” in a fierce, commanding tone that brokers no argument.

Johnny just smiles and says, “I’m not. But, hey, bud, I’ve got to go to go to the rink now, so--”

“I’m coming with you, right?”

Patrick narrows his eyes and grips his marker like he’s going to stab Johnny with it if he answers wrong, and he laughs and says, “‘Course, I need you to have my back out there.”

Kaner suspicious look transforms into a grin, and Johnny glances around the room, grabbing the whistle he gave Kaner yesterday off the kitchen counter and putting it around his neck.

“You use this whenever you see someone giving me trouble, huh? Can you do that for me, little man?”

Kaner nods, serious and wide-eyed, smiling at Johnny proudly. Johnny just hopes Kaner doesn’t remember any of this when he turns back, because if he does, Johnny’s never going to hear the end of it about the dumb way he smiles back.

\---

On the ride over to the rink, Kaner asks, “Do you know my mom?”

Johnny grips the steering wheel tighter, reminding himself he should have been prepared for this question. Honestly, he’s surprised Kaner hasn’t asked earlier. Just going along with things isn’t really his style, even if he is a little kid at the moment. 

“Yeah, I do,” he answers, starting with the simplest version of the truth.

Kaner nods, a satisfied smile on his face like he suspected it all along, and then he says, “She’s the best mom.”

Johnny bites back a smile, saying, “I don’t know, bud, my mom’s pretty great.”

Patrick considers this for awhile, his feet propped up against the dashboard, tapping an absent rhythm, and finally says, “She could be the second best mom?”

Johnny tilts his head back and forth, pretending to think hard about Kaner’s offer and he adds, “In the _world_ ,” to sweeten the deal.

Johnny laughs and says, “Okay, I guess I could agree to that.”

Kaner holds up his hand for a high-five, and Johnny’s not looking to get in another accident any time soon, but he takes one hand off the wheel to slap his palm against Kaner’s tiny one, just the same.

Johnny figures he can show Kaner how to fist-bump once he’s parked the car. 

\---

It’s weird, what Kaner seems to remember and what he doesn’t. He remembers his family, and who he is, but he seems to know something’s up, something’s not right.

He doesn’t ask to go home, or even to call his parents, which seems like a normal little kid thing to want to do. Johnny still calls home a lot, and he’s a proper adult.

But Kaner is mostly so distracted by every single thing he sees that Johnny is almost able to justify how strange it is that he’s taking this so well, because putting Kaner’s ease about this situation down to his gnat-like attention span is easier than dealing with the fact that Kaner’s only real priority at the moment seems to be staying wherever Johnny is. 

He doesn’t know what else to do about it but try to keep Kaner as happy and distracted as possible, but after practice - which was interrupted regularly by Kaner’s sharp whistle, objecting basically whenever anyone managed to get the puck from Johnny, whether it was a clean play or not - Johnny takes Patrick by the hand and sits him down in his own stall in the locker room, and asks, “Are you okay here, bud? Do you want to go back home with me today?”

Patrick gets a wide, scared look that has Johnny really worried for a second, but then Kaner says, “Don’t make me leave,” and Johnny realizes why he was scared in the first place. 

“I’m not going to make you leave, kiddo, I just want to make sure you’re okay and that you understand what’s happening. You know we’re friends, right? Do you remember that?”

Kaner shrugs. “Kinda?”

Johnny tries not to let the relief go to his head, as much as he wants to take that as a ringing endorsement. “You live here, in Chicago, and you play hockey with me, do you remember?”

Kaner chews at the side of his thumb, not quite sucking on it, and says, “I don’t know.”

Johnny holds in a frustrated sigh. It’s not Kaner’s fault any of this is happening. “But you’re okay here? You want to stay?”

Kaner nods enthusiastically. “I have to.”

Johnny’s mouth quirks a little at that. He sounds so sure. “How come?”

Kaner smiles kind of pityingly, which is an impressive look for a six-year-old, and then pats Johnny’s head a little, leaning up on his knees a bit to be able to do so. 

“Because I have to stay here with you, and help you play hockey.”

Johnny laughs, but sobers quickly when Kaner fixes on him with an intent, determined, stare. 

“I help you win,” he says, like it’s the truest thing he knows.

Johnny can’t breathe, for a second, before finally replying, “Yeah, buddy, you do. We win together.”

Kaner smiles, like that settles it, and says, “So I should stay.”

Johnny nods, hoping this doesn’t make him a completely terrible person and says, “I guess you should.”

\---

Just because Kaner’s handling this situation better than could have possibly been expected, that doesn’t mean Johnny’s going to take this thing lying down.

They have playoffs coming up, and the team needs Patrick. “It wears off” isn’t nearly good enough for Johnny, not when they have no real timetable for when that’ll happen.

He may have just spent a couple hundred dollars on new clothes and light-up sneakers for this version of Kaner, but that doesn’t mean Johnny’s in any less of a rush to get his own Patrick back. Because Patrick was right. Johnny does need him to win hockey games, and even if he can manage to do that without Patrick, he’d rather not have to.

He distracts Kaner with Sharpy, who challenges Kaner to a game of one-on-one ball hockey in the stairwell. Patrick doesn’t really seem to fully trust anyone but Johnny, but he’s amused by Sharpy, even if he’s a little wary of him, and when Johnny says, “I’ll come get you in fifteen minutes,” Patrick nods solemnly like they’ve just sworn in blood, and then runs off down the hall out of the locker room, yelling at Sharpy and waving the stick one of the equipment guys got for him over his head.

Johnny watches after him, feeling absurdly like he should go after Kaner, just to make sure he’s okay, but then he shakes his head at himself. Sharpy’s got this. Besides, Johnny’ll join them as soon as he’s done talking to Oduya and Shawsy.

He wants more information about what happened to their own teammates, how much they remembered, exactly how long it lasted, if there were any complications, problems he should know about.

“What did you try? To get them to switch back?” he asks, first things first.

Oduya shrugs and says, “Mostly we tried to jog his memory, get him to believe he was supposed to be an adult, showed him pictures, videos, that sort of thing.”

Shawsy nods. “Yeah, we tried that kind of thing too. Didn’t really work, getting him to remember anything specific, but it calmed Blacker down, anyway.”

“What do you mean, calmed him down?”

“Well, he was basically freaking out, until we took him to his place, showed him his stuff, pictures of him grown up, with all of us. He started to trust us a bit, after that, believe we didn’t want to hurt him.”

“He thought you’d hurt him?” 

Shawsy’s face twists reluctantly. “He didn’t know where he was, who we were. He was scared.”

Johnny thinks about the way Kaner looked at Johnny like he was a complete idiot when he asked Patrick if he was scared of him. 

“Kaner’s not acting like that.”

Shawsy smiles. “Well, no. But that’s just because it’s you and Kaner.”

“What do you mean?” 

Shawsy just snorts. Even Oduya looks unimpressed, and he’s been on the team for like a minute.

Whatever. Kaner just wanted some juice, and glommed onto the first tall, dependable looking person he saw, Johnny figures. It’s not like it’s either of their fault Johnny is a natural leader. Kaner was probably just picking up on that. 

“How long did it last, exactly? The whole time Little was out?”

Oduya nods. “The coaches kept him off a couple more days, just in case he turned back like, while he was out on the ice, or anything, but yeah, he was a kid for almost three weeks.”

They do not have time for that. In three weeks, they should be in the thick of playoffs, but who knows if they’ll even get that far without Kaner. 

“It was only two weeks, when it happened to Blacker,” Shawsy pipes up, giving Johnny an encouraging smile. 

Johnny tries not to be alarmed that the fact that he needs comforting is readily apparent. He has to lock that shit down better, especially around Kaner. Johnny doesn’t want him worrying about any of this. 

He just nods bracingly and checks his watch. It hasn’t been quite fifteen minutes yet, but he’s learned all he can from Shawsy and Oduya, and he hasn’t heard any loud noises or crashes from outside, but knowing Kaner - at any age - it’s only a matter of time.

He gives the boys each a thump on the shoulder, and heads out of to find Kaner.

\---

He thinks about what Oduya and Shawsy had said the whole way home from practice. Pat is animated in the back seat, bopping along to whatever comes on the radio and chiming in on some songs that Johnny hopes are just really lyrically predictable, because he doesn’t want to live in a world where his best friend knows the words to several Justin Bieber songs, or where that’s what he’s somehow managed to retain from his adult life, rather than, say Johnny’s first name. 

Johnny considers the possibility of driving Pat back over to Kaner’s place, walking him through his apartment and showing him what his life as an adult had been like. It’s probably the sensible thing to do, but Oduya and Shawsy had both said that it hadn’t helped to jog memory in the cases of this they’d seen, plus. Kaner seems fine. 

Johnny wants his Kaner back, but he’s not prepared to needlessly traumatize a child - even just a de-aged version of his teammate - to make that happen if it likely won’t even work. 

So he doesn’t take the turn over the river to Kaner’s place. He drives them straight on home to his condo, and sings along with Kaner when a Keith Urban song comes on the radio. 

\---

Once they get upstairs Johnny drops off his bags and Kaner insists he lift him up so Kaner can carefully hang his whistle up on a coat hanger by the front door. 

They grab a quick snack and settle down in front of the TV to watch one of the games Johnny has tivo’d over the last couple of days. He lets Kaner choose which one, and Johnny doesn’t know whether he’s surprised or not when he picks the ‘Hawks game against Vancouver from Wednesday. He doesn’t say anything, but gathers Kaner in against his side and braces them both for whatever Kaner’s reaction to seeing himself on TV - out there on the ice - might be. 

Pat doesn’t say anything for the entire first period, just makes vaguely displeased noises every time the Canucks take a shot on goal or do something particularly shitty. But at the beginning of the second period the Kaner on screen scores a goal, and the one sitting on his couch turns to Johnny. 

“That’s me,” is all he says, and Johnny can’t decipher the look on his face, but he doesn’t look like he’s about to start crying, he doesn’t look confused or upset, so so far so good. 

“Yeah,” Johnny says, and waits to see what Kaner will make of that. 

He looks back to the TV and watches his own goal celebration, sucks his cheeks in and makes a fish face while he ponders, and when he turns back to Johnny he’s grinning. 

“That was a sick goal,” he says, and Johnny has to agree. 

\---

When it’s time to head back out to the UC Johnny asks Kaner if he wants to bring some markers and paper to color during the game. 

Karen, one of the girls from the front office, had agreed to hang back and watch Kaner during the game tonight, and when Johnny had re-introduced Kaner to her this afternoon he’d seemed to like her well enough once Johnny told him she was a friend of his, of theirs. 

They’d organized a couple of seats right next to the ‘Hawks bench so Kaner could see Johnny at all times, just in case. But he might get bored during the period breaks, so Johnny helps him load up a little backpack they’d picked up for him, tucks a fifty into the front pocket when he says he’ll give Karen money to get them snacks and Kaner insists he’s old enough to buy his own snacks. With Johnny’s money. 

When Johnny calls Kaner to tell him they have to leave now Kaner comes barrelling out of Johnny’s bedroom wearing one of the variety of tiny ‘Hawks jerseys that Sharpy had brought him at practice this afternoon. Johnny hadn’t even thought to dress him in one for the game, but Kaner’s all over it. 

He’s wearing the ‘Toews’ jersey, number nineteen on his sleeve and a ‘C’ over his heart. 

Johnny doesn’t ask him why he’d picked that one instead of his own, or Sharpy’s or Hoss’s. He starts to, but when he tries to speak he finds he can’t swallow the lump in his throat. He helps Kaner pull his jacket and backpack on instead, and they head downstairs hand in hand. 

\---

Johnny hands Kaner off to Karen so they can go find their seats, but he comes back to the locker room just before they take the ice and high fives the whole team as they file out. Seabs had suggested it to Johnny, and it felt like the right thing to do. Kaner thought it was awesome, and the guys got a kick out of seeing him there in a ‘Hawks jersey, and above all else he’s still their teammate. 

Johnny doesn’t feel right heading out there without Kaner, doesn’t think he ever will, but it’s different now. A little better, knowing that he isn’t injured or sick, and a little worse because he’s here and he’s fine but he’s six years old and he can’t play. Johnny always worries about Kaner, but it’s different now. This isn’t the kind of feeling he can or should ignore. 

\---

The Predators score first and when he looks over from the bench Johnny sees Kaner standing up on his seat, shaking his little fist at any Nashville player that skates by and screaming blue murder, it looks like. Karen has one hand on his back to make sure he doesn’t fall, and most of the people sitting around them look pretty impressed by his vehemence, if anything. 

Mostly Johnny doesn’t think about him. He knows he’s safe, and he’s nearby, and he knows that Kaner would want him to focus on this game, so he does. He grabs an assist when they go 2 - 1 up and winks at Kaner when he skates back to the bench. Kaner slaps his palm up against the glass and when Johnny touches his stick to his side of the glass, Kaner pauses to grin before he goes right back to heckling the Predators. The old couple sitting behind Kaner look absolutely charmed by all of this. 

Things take a turn for the worse when Johnny gets taken to the boards in the second period, though. McGrattan hits him hard and low when he doesn’t even have the puck and Johnny doesn’t go down, but he’s shaken by it. He shoves at McGrattan and skates back to the bench while McGrattan is sent to the box. The noise in the arena dies down when the penalty is announced, but Johnny picks up on a frighteningly familiar scream and looks down to where Kaner’s sitting. 

Kaner is pummeling the glass with his fists, face bright red and screwed up in the ugliest kind of fury Johnny has ever seen. He’s screaming, literally screaming, and Johnny picks up something about “my captain” before he’s up and off the bench and sending someone to go get Kaner and Karen and bring them somewhere else, let Kaner cool off backstage or something. 

He goes to look for him as soon as the period ends, but he doesn’t have to go far - Kaner is sitting in his stall. He’s calmed down by now, and is quietly coloring, pausing only to take sips from the strawberry juice box he has next to him. 

A lot of the guys had noticed Johnny freaking out about Kaner freaking out, and the room is silent when Johnny drops his helmet and drops to his knees in front of Kaner. 

“Hey bud. You doin’ okay?” Johnny stupidly wants to gather Kaner up in his arms and check him for … what, he doesn’t know. Some physical sign that Johnny has somehow traumatized him for life by bringing him here tonight. 

Kaner looks up at him and grins, and it’s like he deflates, the marker falling out of his hand and his shoulders slumping before he scrambles up to throw his arms around Johnny’s neck. 

“You’re okay!” Kaner says, and Johnny feels even worse. 

“Karen told me you were fine and I watched you on the big TV but I couldn’t see you for real and I was worried,” Kaner says in a rush, and Johnny thinks he might throw up. 

“I’m sorry, buddy. I’m fine, everything’s fine. I’m not hurt, I promise,” he reassures Kaner, but Kaner isn’t satisfied till he’s pushed Johnny’s sweaty hair back out of his face and touched his nose and his eyebrows and his cheekbones and jaw with gentle fingers like he’s checking for breaks. 

“You seem fine,” Kaner says finally, and Johnny starts to relax. 

Johnny lifts Kaner up and sits down in his stall with Kaner on his knee and they stay like that for the next few minutes. Kaner doesn’t startle or get upset when Coach Q yells at the locker room a little bit, but he keeps one hand tucked into the collar of Johnny’s gear the entire time, and it nearly breaks Johnny’s heart when he has to put Kaner down and head back out without him. Kaner waves him off, though, tells him to score a goal for him, and sits back down to resume his coloring. 

Shawsy takes great pleasure in pointing out that Kaner had been drawing pictures of McGrattan getting eaten by a shark. 

\---

The Predators tie up the game in the third, but Johnny scores the game winning goal with less than a minute left on the clock. He asks for the puck and brings it back for Kaner. 

\---

They’re both exhausted by the time they get home. Kaner had been in his element after the game, running around the locker room once the media cleared out, getting chased by Stalberg and then chasing Hayes, who didn’t seem to have to work all that hard to appear terrified by him. 

Kaner dozes in the car, and Johnny can’t take his eyes off him every time they stop in traffic or pull up to a red light. His body is thrumming with adrenaline from the game, his ears ringing from the noise in the locker room, but he feels shaky and somehow empty and too full all at once. He doesn’t wake Kaner when he parks. He leaves his bag to deal with in the morning and carefully picks Kaner up, cradling his head against his shoulder. Kaner doesn’t stir as Johnny gets him changed for bed and tucks him up under the covers. 

Johnny sits and watches him sleep for a long time. 

Eventually he has to get up to go and change out of his suit, but the second he stands up Kaner turns toward him in his sleep, burrows closer to where Johnny’s sitting on the edge of the bed. When Johnny reaches to tuck the covers back up under his chin he sees that Kaner is still clutching the game puck in one hand. 

\---

The next morning, Johnny wakes up to an empty bed and freaks out horribly before he registers the sounds of cartoons blasting from the living room.

“Fuck off!” he shouts angrily, banging the wall above his bed before he fully remembers who he’s yelling at.

It’s harder to remember he can’t get pissed off at this Kaner when it’s not even five AM yet, but he hears Kaner cackle and then quite obviously turn the TV up, so obviously he’s not taking Johnny’s tone to heart.

Grumbling bitterly to himself about all Kaners, large and small, Johnny gets out of bed and takes a piss before wandering out into the rest of the apartment, tugging a hoodie on over the T-shirt he slept in. 

He sees Kaner peaking over the back of the couch at him, but he ducks his head down when Johnny catches his eye.

Johnny takes a detour to the coffee maker and sets up a pot before heading over to the couch to slump down beside Kaner.

He has the TV on mute now.

“Don’t you want to watch your show?” Johnny asks, squinting blearily at the TV. He doesn’t recognize the characters running back and forth on screen, and Kaner just shrugs anyway, tossing the remote away from him and fixing his eyes Johnny.

“It’s boring,” Kaner says, and it’s not hard to figure out that he’s waiting for Johnny to prove that he’s more entertaining than whatever passes for quality children’s programing these days. 

It’s not exactly a medium Johnny ever thought he’d be in competition with, but he’s not going to let that stop him.

“Have you eaten?” he asks, before he realizes Kaner’s not even tall enough to reach most of the stuff in the cupboards.

Kaner shakes his head, kicking his feet idly, and Johnny gets up off the couch decisively, pulling Kaner up with him.

“You want to draw or something while I make us some pancakes?” he asks, peering down at Kaner.

He’s only actually made pancakes on his own once, but Johnny figures if he fails miserably, that alone has to hold pretty solid entertainment value for Kaner, even if he’s not likely to delight in Johnny’s culinary misadventures as much now as he would have as an adult. If he happens to do a decent job of them, on the other hand, then they get a delicious breakfast and Johnny can call his mom later and tell her that time she attempted to teach him to cook paid off after all.

Shit, speaking of calling his mom, he should really check his phone and make sure she hasn’t called him in the past couple days. By now, the fact that Kaner’s out with an “upper body injury” is going to be getting attention, especially since he missed last night’s game, and his mom tends to fuss as much over Kaner as she does Johnny.

He sets Kaner up at the table with another colouring book - just as a suggestion - and a pile of makers that’ll probably end up all over his skin, just like last time. Then Johnny grabs himself a cup of coffee and goes to find his phone.

It’s still in his coat pocket from last night, and Johnny’s alarmed to discover he’s received a total of forty-seven texts and nine phone calls in the interim. 

He scrolls through the texts first, feelings increasingly sick to his stomach. There are a bunch of messages from his friends back home, and a couple from Soupy and Versteeg and some other ex-Hawks congratulating him on his “new arrival,” or making threats about the texts merely being stand-ins for “It’s a boy!” cards to follow in the mail. Most alarmingly of all, there’s a message from Oshie that just says, “Happened to Bergy last season. Sux, bro. Xo xo.”

Clearly, sometime in the night, pictures of Johnny out in the world with Kaner have made their way onto the Internet. Johnny hates the Internet. 

Forgoing checking his actual voicemail for now, Johnny gets his laptop from his bedroom and opens it, sitting down across from Kaner.

He pauses from his attempts to draw a dragon on his own stomach to smile toothily at Johnny and doesn’t look away until Johnny smiles obligingly back.

He checks Deadspin first, and sure enough, there he is, plastered at the top of the page, looking sallow and sketchy under the florescents at Target and holding Kaner’s hand.

The headline reads ‘HAWKS CAPTAIN WITH SECRET LOVE CHILD?? and underneath there’s a story from one of the women who hit on him saying how rude Johnny was to her and how terribly behaved Kaner was.

Johnny bristles on Kaner’s behalf and then his own, because unless the “woman” in this story is actually that one dude who almost got the business end of Kaner’s teeth at the end of the night, then whoever submitted that story is talking out of their ass. Kaner’s better behaved now than he is as an adult, and Johnny figures Kaner deserves some credit for that, no matter what it says about his adult self. Relatively speaking, he’s still coming out ahead, and randoms at Target need to check themselves.

He knows better than to read the comment pages, and clicks away to another tab, checking more reputable blogs for how they’re covering the story.

There’s an enthusiastic if slightly mocking defense of the outing in Puck Daddy, picking up on the details the PR department has been putting out to the press about how Kaner’s actually Johnny’s relative, and Johnny’s feeling considerably better after reading a soliloquy on his commitment to family and general upstanding-ness as a human being. Or at least he’s feeling better until he closes his computer and picks his phone back up.

The first voicemail is from Kaner’s mom, and she uses his whole name, which is his first clue he’s in trouble, but it doesn’t prepare him for how big.

“Jonathan Bryan Toews, did you really think I wouldn’t recognize my own son? I only gave birth to him! Upper-body injury my ass. You have until noon tomorrow to explain this to me or I’m going down there to see for myself. _Call me_.”

The next message is from his own mother, but it’s just two minutes of her swearing at him in French, and he hangs up in the middle, frankly disturbed that she knows more curses than he can even translate. 

Johnny thinks he might be hyperventilating a little bit, and when he notices Kaner staring at him with large, worried eyes, Johnny closes his eyes, counting down from five in his head, allowing the panic to take hold of him just that long, and then forces himself to calm the hell down.

“Tazer?” Kaner asks, chin propped up on his hands.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Johnny assures him, and then attempts a smile when Kaner continues to eye him skeptically. 

“I’ve got to call your mom, she wants to know how you’re doing,” Johnny explains, and Kaner perks up.

“Can I talk to her? And my dad?”

Johnny pretty much walked into that one. “Let me talk to them first, okay?”

“Why?”

“I just have to explain some stuff.”

“What stuff?”

“About - about what happened. They’re a bit worried,” Johnny says, gritting his teeth and wishing he’d just excused himself to the bedroom and made the call privately. He doesn’t want to upset Kaner, but there’s no good way to tell him how much his family is probably freaking the hell out right now. 

“Because of when you got hurt, last night, you mean?” Kaner asks.

Johnny can’t help but laugh.

“No, it’s not about that. I’m fine, remember?”

Kaner shrugs. “But it looked bad. I bet they were watching, right? They probably saw.” He smiles at Johnny, nodding a little. “My mom is probably just worried about you.”

Johnny furrows his brow, wondering if this is Kaner’s way of telling Johnny that _he’s_ still worried, but he eventually gives up trying to figure it out and just sucks it up and dials Donna’s number. 

“I’ve heard stories about this, you know. I didn’t think it would ever happen to my Pat,” she says before Johnny even identifies himself, and seriously? Was Johnny really the only one who didn’t know he was in danger of having a teammate spontaneously turn into a mini version of themselves? You’d think someone would have warned him. He’s captain, after all. 

“He’s fine,” Johnny opens with, needing to get that out of the way. “It’s supposed to wear off in a couple weeks, from what’s happened to other guys in the past. I’m taking good care of him.” He thinks about it for a second, making sure he’s got his bases covered, and then adds, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away.”

There’s a long silence, and Johnny braces himself for yelling.

Kaner gives him a thumbs up, and Johnny bites his lip to stop from laughing. 

Finally, Donna clears her throat and says, “Are you watching his sugar intake? Because if you get him all hyped up on juice boxes he’s going to be a terror when he crashes.”

Johnny punches himself in the leg to hold in a laugh this time and just says, “I got him some no-sugar added strawberry ones from the store, and I’m only letting him have one with every meal.”

She makes a considering noise and says, “He can’t sleep without a nightlight. Or he couldn’t, at that age.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m on it,” Johnny says, and hopes she doesn’t ask to clarify what he means by that. 

It’s not like they’re doing anything wrong, it’s just weird to think about explaining to Patrick’s mom that he’s sharing a bed with her son, regardless of what age he is at the time. 

“Did you get him a coat for if it rains?”

Shit, no. The little denim jacket Kaner had picked out probably doesn’t count, anyway. “I will,” Johnny promises, hoping his contrite tone will help forgive the oversight. 

“Okay, Jonathan,” she says, sounding grave, “last question.”

Johnny braces himself again. 

“How are you doing?”

He lets out a loud, shaky breath. “I’m okay.”

“Are you?”

“Yeah, we missed him out on the ice with us, last night, and of course the situation isn’t ideal, but--”

“I know you’ll take the very best care of my son, Jonathan, but you have to take care of yourself to do that, you understand me? I remember how Pat was at that age. Cute as a button and charming as all hell, but the energy never stops with him and don’t let him fool you, he knows exactly how cute he is and he’ll use those big blue eyes to con you, if he hasn’t already.”

“He has,” Johnny admits, laughing a little less raggedly, now, shaking his head at Kaner, who grins and sticks out his tongue. “I’m managing it.”

She laughs a little, too, and says, “If anyone can handle him, it’s you. But that’s not all I meant. I know you must miss him.”

Johnny hasn’t been letting himself think about it. Missing Kaner as a teammate, missing what he brought to the ice, sure, easy. Missing Kaner himself? Just hanging out, shooting the shit, getting pissed and actually being able to show it? All the darker, murkier ways he’s caught himself half day dreaming about Kaner’s smile, the sharp curve of his lips when he smirks, the way sweat drips down his face when he’s just finished a shift, how Johnny finds himself wanting to lick it off? Yeah, no. No so much. He doesn’t let himself think about that stuff on a good day, and certainly not when he’s got a pint-sized version of Kaner sitting across from him, kicking him absently under the table and beaming at him guilelessly. 

“He’s better company like this, anyway,” Johnny says eventually, because he has to say something, and even though Donna just snorts and says, “I’m sure that’s right,” in the driest tone Johnny’s ever heard, it’s worth it just for the way saying so makes Kaner smile at him all the brighter.

\---

Kaner babbles to his mom happily for about fifteen minutes after she’s done giving Johnny the third degree, and Johnny tries not to listen in too obviously, but he’s relieved when Kaner doesn’t mention all the pizza and fruit loops Johnny’s been letting him eat. He’s going to be better about that from now on, anyway. 

Kaner talks to his dad a bit, too, but gets really upset when his sisters try to say hi, and Johnny ends up having to take the phone away from him when Kaner starts yelling at them for being liars.

He stammers an apology to Jessica and then comes over to Kaner’s side of the table, putting one hand on Kaner’s shoulder and tipping his chin up with the other. 

Kaner sniffs, and wipes at his eyes. He’s not crying, but it’s obviously a near thing. 

“What happened, bud? What’d they say?”

Kaner just shakes his head violently and says, “They sounded wrong.”

“What?”

“They were _old_ ,” Kaner basically wails, but Johnny’s still confused.

“But you know - you know it’s later, right? Your sisters are grown up, like you are, or like you should be, in this time. It’s just you’re not - you’re not yourself, right now.”

Kaner rubs at his face some more and then snaps, “I know that! I’m not stupid!”

Johnny really has no idea what to do here, and he’s pretty sure Kaner’s working himself up into a full on temper tantrum when suddenly he lets out an angry, deflating breath and slumps down lower in his chair. 

“I’m the big brother. I’m supposed to be older. I look after them.”

He gives Johnny a forlorn, quivering look, and Johnny hugs Kaner half just so Kaner won’t see how upset Johnny’s face gets in response.

“I know, buddy,” he says vaguely, squeezing Kaner a bit too tight, probably, but Kaner just squirms in closer, wrapping his arms around Johnny’s waist. 

“I can still take care of them, right? I’m a good big brother?”

Johnny rubs Kaner’s back soothingly and thinks about all the times he’s seen Kaner so thoroughly and automatically be there for his sisters, spoiling them whenever they come into Chicago, bragging about them constantly, having dance parities over Skype when he’s been away from home too long, and eventually just holds on even tighter and says, “Yeah, Pat, you’re good.”

\---

Johnny used to being okay with kids, more or less. He’s not great with them, but he’s not really great with most people. He mostly tries to talk to kids like they’re actual humans, and just smile more along the way, hoping for the best. It helps that he doesn’t tend to have much interaction with children outside of playing promotional hockey with them or signing their sticks, but Johnny thinks he does better with kids than adults, as a general rule.

It’s always been a lot easier with Kaner, though, talking, smiling, feeling relaxed inside his own skin. As a kid, it’s turning out that that’s no different. It’s better, actually, because at least when this Kaner gets upset Johnny can just pick him up and hold him upside down by his ankles until he starts to laugh and forget about whatever Johnny’d done to piss him off or hurt his feelings. It also helps that Johnny feels less of an obligation to piss this Kaner off or hurt his feelings intentionally just as a basic coping strategy he’s needed to employ in the face of Kaner’s adult self’s chaotic and frequently infuriating existence. At six, Kaner’s not going to get drunk and dance on any tables if Johnny isn’t there to watch him, and he might punch some people, but only if they’re being mean to Johnny, and even then, he’s not going to do much lasting damage. At six, Kaner’s not going to make fun of Johnny for doing nice stuff for him, or think it’s weird that Johnny wants to spend all their time together, he just soaks it up, unselfconsciously demanding more.

It’s a pretty great arrangement all around, actually, and it’s almost enough to make Johnny think he’s going to miss it when Kaner finally turns back, although that would be easier to sell to himself if he hadn’t spent so many hours staring at Kaner while he played in the park that day, pushing him on the swing and focusing hard on the back of Kaner’s head, trying to turn Kaner back into himself with the power of his will alone.

\---

Johnny and the ‘Hawks have to fly out to New Jersey that night, so once he’s got lunch ready and wrangled Kaner into clothes that aren’t covered in food and/or art supplies and the kind of mood where he _might_ sit still for half an hour, he sets the dining room table and lays their meal out, prepared to have what might likely prove to be his first ever serious conversation with Patrick Kane. It’s probably better for both of them that it’s happening with this version. 

Kaner digs into his chicken and pasta, happy to concentrate on the operation of a knife and fork until Johnny clears his throat and Kaner looks up at him. 

“So we .. uh, I have a game in New Jersey tomorrow. You know where that is?” 

Kaner thinks about the question, stuffs his mouth full of more pasta than Johnny thinks should fit in there, and thinks more while he chews. Johnny can tell he’s thinking because he has his finger on his chin and he’s squinting. 

“I think so? When you say it I feel like I ate too much candy and need to throw up.” 

Johnny laughs. 

“Yep, that’s the one. So … it’s pretty far away, and I’ve got to fly there, and stay the night.” 

Kaner nods, still eating, so Johnny continues. 

“I was thinking you might want to stay with Abby? Remember, you met her at the rink yesterday with Sharpy? You liked her. She’s really nice.” He can’t really see leaving Kaner with a stranger, at this point. 

Kaner’s mouth drops open around a mouthful of food and his fork clatters to his plate. His eyes go huge and terrified. 

“Or not, or totally not that at all,” Johnny says quickly. “We could absolutely fly your mom in to stay with you? She’d come here, you wouldn’t have to go anywhere, you could stay right here?” he tries, smiling and nodding in the hopes that that’ll encourage Kaner. 

It doesn’t. 

Kaner’s eyes fill with tears and his bottom lip wobbles, even though he bites down on it and sniffs hard to keep the tears at bay. He’s trying so hard not to cry, and it’s not working one little bit, and Johnny knows the feeling because he’s kind of tearing up himself here. 

“Kaner, I … Pat, don’t cry. Don’t cry, buddy. Tell me what you want me to do,” Johnny practically begs. 

Kaner starts to speak, but his voice breaks and his mouth snaps shut again and Johnny thinks he can hear him gritting his teeth from across the table. Johnny can’t handle this. He pushes his chair back from the table and comes around to Kaner’s side, gets down on one knee next to his chair and reaches for Kaner. Kaner tumbles into his arms and when he buries his face in against Johnny’s neck Johnny can feel the hot splash of tears against his throat. 

Johnny hugs Kaner to him and cards his fingers through the soft hair that curls at the back of Kaner’s neck. Johnny rocks him gently until he feels the tension bleed out of his body, till the little hands clenched tight in his T-shirt go slack. 

When he pulls away Kaner won’t look at him, and Johnny can’t bear to look at the tear tracks on Kaner’s cheeks. 

“What’s the matter, bud? Don’t you wanna see your mom?” 

Kaner brings his arms up around Johnny’s neck when he hugs him this time, and says more to Johnny’s shoulder than Johnny himself, “I want to go with you.” 

Which … Johnny hadn’t really thought about, because it doesn’t seem practical. But that was his mistake, he realizes, thinking anything about Kaner would ever be practical or easy. That’s not how it works, thank god. 

It’s so much easier, so much more strangely satisfying to make allowances for this Kaner than it is to indulge either of them when Kaner is himself, so Johnny doesn’t hesitate here. 

“Then I’ll make that happen, Pat.” 

\--- 

Thankfully being the captain affords Johnny some interesting perks of the job - namely the kind that mean he can insist on bringing little Kaner with them on the road - and people might not like it, but there’s really fuck all they can actually do about it. Q is worried, and Johnny can’t exactly blame him. They’re already one pretty important player down, and Johnny knows now is not the time for him to be distracted and off his game too. But he assures Q of this, insists he understands the gravity of the situation, and when Jonathan Toews tells you he gets it, few people are inclined to question that. 

When he leaves Q’s office the only warning he gets is a bellowed battle cry, and then he’s tackled around the kneecaps. Kaner gets a hold of Johnny’s legs and tries to drag him down or knock him over, going red in the face and struggling until Johnny realizes he isn’t going to let up, and when he flops dramatically to the ground Kaner climbs onto his chest with his arms thrown up over his head in victory. 

“SuperKane strikes again!” he declares triumphantly.

Johnny grins up at Kaner and grabs him by the wrists, lifting him when Johnny sits up so he can swing his legs up around Johnny’s neck and sit on his shoulders. 

When Johnny tips him down onto the back seat of the car Kaner keeps hold of the strings of Johnny’s hoodie and doesn’t let him up. 

“I get to come, right? You’re not leaving me behind?” 

Johnny had assumed Kaner hadn’t asked before now because he’d known Johnny wouldn’t go back on his word, that he’d find a way to make this work no matter what. That he’d never let Kaner down. But now that he looks at Kaner, looks at his face when he finally asks the question, he realizes maybe Kaner hadn’t asked yet because he was scared to hear the answer. That doesn’t sit right with Johnny. He hadn’t thought he’d given any version of Kaner reason to doubt him, or the things he’d do for them. 

He carefully loosens Kaner’s hold on his hoodie and buckles him in, paying strict attention to his work and not looking at Kaner at all. 

“You’re coming, bud. I said you were, so you are.” 

Johnny feels as much as he sees the breath Kaner had been holding whoosh out of him in a rush of relief. 

“Thanks, Johnny,” Kaner says, and that’s the first time he’s called Johnny anything other than ‘Tazer’. 

“Sure thing, little guy,” Johnny replies, patting Kaner on the head as he pulls away. 

He’d do anything for this kid, but he’s not ready to call him ‘Kaner’ yet. 

\---

Johnny is kind of dreading the prospect of flying with a six year old, but it turns out he needn’t have been. Kaner is so stoked about getting to fly on an airplane when it’s full of only people he mostly knows and he can wear his pajamas whilst doing so that he spends fifteen minutes running up and down the aisle and lying under people’s seats so he can grab their feet and scare the shit out of them, but once he gets bored of that he crawls easily into Johnny’s lap and curls up to nap. He doesn’t wake up again until Johnny gently scoops him up to carry him off the plane in New Jersey, and even then it’s just to sleepily request juice. 

\---

Kaner gets a real kick out of the tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the hotel bathroom, and Johnny’s hit with a strangely painful wave of nostalgia, thinking about how Kaner’s the same way as an adult, except about the alcohol bottles in hotel minibars. Johnny never got why Kaner even liked them so much, since he always ended up pouring like six into a coffee mug at a time anyway. Once when he was especially drunk, Kaner claimed the tiny bottles made him feel taller, but then refused to acknowledge it after the fact, which made making fun of him for it less rewarding.

It’s too late to go out and do anything, not that Johnny would be inclined to, even if Kaner wasn’t a six-year-old right now, but Kaner seems content to bounce around on one of the beds for the first half hour while Johnny hangs up his suit and sends Kaner’s mom a text to let her know Kaner made it through the flight okay. Now that she knows what’s happened, sending her a lot of little updates makes Johnny feel less guilty about keeping it from her in the first place.

He also calls his own mother finally, sitting down on the bed Kaner’s not currently attempting to do a handstand on and watching Kaner warily out of the corner of his eye. If he falls wrong, he might crack his head on the bedside table. Johnny positions himself closer to it just in case, hoping Kaner doesn’t notice that’s what he’s doing.

His mom picks up on the third ring, and says, “Donna called me. Or you’d be in trouble.”

He figures he still is, going by her tone. “It’s not like there’s a handbook for this situation, you know!” Johnny defends himself. “I’m doing the best I can.”

Kaner successfully completes his first handstand and gapes at Johnny expectantly, holding the position until Johnny smiles absently and says, “Good job, buddy,” out the side of his mouth before returning his attention to his mother, adding, “What was I supposed to do? Call you and say, ‘Mom, Kaner’s turned into a six-year-old who seems to think I’m solely responsible for providing for all his juice and non-juice related needs’?”

Kaner sticks his tongue out at Johnny at the question, and he flops onto his back, head hanging backwards off the edge of the bed, looking at Johnny upside down. He makes a comical frowny face that turns into a smile because of the angle, and Johnny grins back.

Johnny’s distracted by it, and misses half of his mom’s reply, tuning back in just in time for her to say, “And that’s not so different from how he acted before, you know, but of course I would still have expected you tell me about this. You’re using my sister’s family as your little cover story for this - You thought that wasn’t something you should check about first?”

Johnny flushes guiltily and Kaner rolls onto his stomach, eyes fixed on Johnny’s face. Kaner’s mood has shifted with Johnny’s, and he resolves to keep his expressions to himself from now on. It’s a practice he needs to be getting back into the habit of anyway. Kaner’s bound to change back to into his adult self one of these days, and Johnny’s going to be fucked if he can’t keep his emotions to himself better than this when that happens. 

“I’m sorry about that, but it was the best we could come up with. She’s not mad, is she?”

“Confused, but I explained the situation. Expect to be giving your actual cousins some very nice Christmas presents next year.”

Johnny refuses to let that rile him, even though he always gives them nice Christmas presents. He was good about that even before he became a millionaire.

“Did you know about this? That it happened sometimes?”

“I’m still having trouble believing it happens, even now, and I’d certainly have warned you if I knew,” she says, reproachful, and then clucks disapprovingly. “But given the number of cases I’m starting to hear about, I would really have thought the league would be more proactive about treatment and prevention by this point.”

“I know!” Johnny shouts, comfortably sharing her outrage, and they spend another fifteen minutes talking about the appalling state of leadership in the National Hockey League and then just catching up a bit about how things are back in Winnipeg.

When he hangs up, Kaner’s still staring at him, so Johnny pulls a dumb, hopefully funny face and then grins when Kaner immediately points and laughs.

It’s only nine thirty, but Johnny is tired, and he’s got an early skate with the team in the morning. There’ll be a chance for a rest when he gets back, but there’s no reason not to get an early night, all the same. Johnny wonders if his and Kaner’s napping schedules will be as in sync now as they usually are when they’re on the road.

“You ready for bed, buddy?” He asks, already heading to his bag to grab a pair of sweats and a T-shirt to sleep in.

Kaner says, “I want a story first!” and then sits up, giving Johnny wide eyes to prove how awake he is.

Johnny laughs, and says, “What kind?”

“A story about me!” Kaner says, bouncing a little. “A grown-up Kaner and Tazer story!”

Johnny laughs again, and says, “Okay, brush your teeth and let me think of one.”

Kaner springs off the bed immediately, and Johnny changes quickly, wracking his brain for a story that doesn’t involve drunken debauchery or them swearing at each other a lot during a game.

Kaner comes back out and hops onto the bed beside Johnny, and he shrugs a little to himself, figuring that just because there are two beds in here, that doesn’t necessarily mean Kaner’s going to feel safer all the way on the other side of the room from Johnny. Anyway, it’s just what they’re used to, now. Routines are a good thing.

Johnny pulls the blankets up around them, and Kaner lies on his side, listening with rapt attention as Johnny tells Kaner the story of his first NHL goal, and the sweet pass from Kaner that made it happen.

\---

They win against the Devils, which is great, and easier said than done without Kaner playing with them. Johnny gets two points, but the way Kaner’s acting afterwards, you’d think it was eight.

Johnny has to focus really hard on Kaner’s beaming face and his high, thrilled re-telling of Johnny’s performance to keep from needing to go into a rage coma just thinking about certain actual eight point games he’s witnessed in recent months, but luckily, Kaner’s nothing if not an excellent distraction.

\---

Flying home is kind of a disaster. Kaner has grown cranky and withdrawn for reasons Johnny can’t fathom, and he gets really snappy whenever the other guys on the team try to come say hi. Kaner hasn’t exactly warmed to most of the other ‘Hawks, but he seems to appreciate that they’re his team, on some level, even if they don’t quite make the cut in terms of people Kaner is happy to crawl all over and demand beverages from. So it’s a bit weird that he’s suddenly glaring at anyone who comes within two feet of their seat on the plane.

Kaner’s even mean to Sharpy, and Johnny’s pretty sure Sharpy’s been sneaking Kaner candy whenever Johnny’s back has been turned this whole trip.

Johnny doesn’t get it, but the great thing about Kaner being a six-year-old right now is that it’s way easier to ask him about what’s upsetting him than it is as an adult. He’s sort of obligated to ask, for one, because he’s responsible for looking after Kaner right now, and for another thing, Kaner’s a lot more likely to actually tell him these days.

He tucks his arm around Kaner’s shoulder’s, leaning a little closer between the seats and says, “What’s wrong, bud?”

Kaner frowns and shoves him away, which is a first, but Johnny backs off right away, holding his hands up high above his head.

After a second, Kaner giggles and rolls his eyes.

Johnny dives in, tickling him, and Kaner shrieks and kicks the seat in front of him.

Stally lets out an offended, “Hey!” and then Kaner does it again, a spiteful look taking over the gleeful smile that’d been on his face a second before.

“Pat,” Johnny says, and then gives Kaner a stern look until he subsides from glaring at the back of Stally’s seat like he was trying to set it on fire with his mind.

“What is it?” Johnny asks again.

Kaner crosses his arms and refuses to look at Johnny.

“C’mon, buddy,” Johnny wheedles, putting his hand on Kaner’s knee and shaking it a little.

“It’s not fair,” Kaner says bitterly, crossing his arms more tightly around himself.

“What isn’t?”

“They all still get to play with you,” Kaner snaps petulantly, and Johnny has to catch his leg before he kicks Stally’s seat again.

It gives him a second to try to think about a reply, which is helpful, except he doesn’t really come up with anything good.

“I’m sorry, kiddo, I know it sucks.” He gives Kaner a sympathetic frown and in a fit of honesty adds, “I miss playing with you, too.”

Kaner looks momentarily mollified, but then sighs again and sinks down sulkily in his seat.

“You can’t play in a team game,” Johnny continues, “but you could come out on the ice with me this afternoon? We can skate a little, have a shooting contest or something like that, what do you say?”

Kaner’s face lights up with excitement and he clutches Johnny’s arm rapturously, saying in a soft, adoring voice, “I’m going to kick your butt.”

Johnny just laughs and says, “Don’t be too sure, bud. I’m not going to take it easy on you just ‘cause you’re a little kid.”

Kaner makes an unimpressed face and says, “You’re Tazer, you’d never just let me win.”

Johnny’s weirdly touched by the confidence in Kaner’s voice, and all he can do is smile stupidly in response when Kaner says, “I’m going to beat you, anyway.”

\---

They get back to Chicago by mid-morning, and Kaner’s buzzing with pent up energy after being stuck on the plane and then the drive back to Johnny’s condo with nothing but the prospect of skating again in the near future to occupy his thoughts.

Johnny dumps his clothes out onto the bed and takes a quick shower while Kaner changes into his ‘Toews’ jersey and matching pants and then camps out on the other side of the bathroom door, yelling at Johnny to hurry up. 

They go to the Icehouse and end up joining up with a class called Stakes and Sticks they’re running there that day, and there’s a minor fuss when people realize who Johnny is, but the instructor is as delighted as the kids and Johnny gets away with only signing a couple sticks and jerseys before the excitement dies down.

Johnny kind of wishes it was still winter, so he could just take Kaner out to an outdoor rink where they would draw less attention and could just skate by themselves, talking normally to each other, but they have to work with what they’ve got. 

He watches Kaner extra carefully, trying to tell if he’s upset by being surrounded by so many other people on the ice, not exactly the one-on-one time either of them was hoping for, but before long, Kaner’s right in the mix with all the other little kids, giving them tips on how to hold their sticks and demonstrating the proper use and form for a saucer pass.

Johnny feels a strange mix of pride and wistfulness watching Kaner dekeing around the other kids, helping them be better, making jokes and laughing with him. It’s weird to let himself feel so easily and openly proud of Kaner, and weirder still, because Johnny knows Kaner’s older self would be just the same, making kids feel at ease, effortlessly sharing the love of the game.

He’s still a pest, too, exactly like his older self, and that gets Kaner into trouble after about an hour. Johnny doesn’t even notice the way Kaner’s been chewing on his mouth guard, hanging half out of his mouth like always, until one of the little girls he’d been skating with gets mad at Kaner for trying to boss her around, it sounds like, and she shouts, “You’re wearing the wrong jersey! If you’re going to chew your dumb mouth guard like that you should be wearing an 88!” and then skates away furiously.

Johnny feels like his heart stops, just for a second, and Kaner gives him a wide, guilty look right before they both collapse into a fit of laughter, halfway across the ice from each other but their positions mirrored as they bend over, slapping their thighs and wheezing.

Once they recover, they skate over to each other, meeting up in the middle, and Kaner grins up at Johnny sheepishly and says, “Guess I still kinda stand out, huh?”

His eyes are still sparkling with amusement, but there’s a tiny thread of worry in Kaner’s voice, and Johnny puts his hand on Kaner’s collar, squeezing reassuringly, and tries to banish that anxiety from Kaner’s mind, promising him, “I wouldn’t have you any other way.”

\---

Sharpy and Abby come by with the baby later that afternoon, and Kaner seems pretty delighted by the opportunity to blow raspberries in Maddie’s face and build towers of blocks that she then knocks down, so Johnny gets a chance to have a cup of coffee and a conversation with someone his own age, which isn’t something he ever thought he’d find himself missing as much he does right now.

Still, Johnny’d defy anyone to say Kaner’s a worse conversationalist like this than he is as a twenty-three year old.

It’s a pretty good way to spend the afternoon, at least until Maddie starts to cry and cry and won’t stop, to the point where Kaner looks like he’s going to start crying just out of solidarity.

Johnny is trying to think of a polite way to ask them to leave when Abby rolls her eyes at him and starts bundling Madelyn up, already halfway to the door.

“You stay for awhile, honey,” she says to Sharpy, and then holds out her cheek, letting Johnny kiss her goodbye and smile apologetically.

“Kids are a handful, huh?” he says.

She laughs, and says, “You have no idea.”

Kaner calms down once Abby and Maddie are gone, but he doesn’t look particularly happy that Sharpy’s still there, retreating to the far corner of the living room and occasionally glancing up from his drawing to glare at Sharpy until he finally curls up around one of the throw pillows Johnny’s mom made him buy when she came to visit, drifting off to sleep. 

“Do you think he’s okay?”

“Kaner?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, aside from the spontaneous de-aging, sure.”

“You don’t think he’s... acting weird?”

“He’s _Kaner_. Kid or not, that’s pretty much a given.”

“Yeah, but this - I’m just...” Johnny makes a pinched face, “worried about him.”

“We’re all worried about him, Tazer. But you heard Johnny and Shawsy, it wears off.”

“Yeah, but what about just for right now?” He gestures across the room to where Kaner is conked out on the rug, his thumb in his mouth. “Something’s wrong with him. He can’t - He won’t get comfortable around anyone else and he always freaks out whenever I’m not around.”

Sharpy snorts. “And?”

Johnny shrugs impatiently. “What do you mean _and_? It’s weird!”

“Not really.”

Johnny stares at him, confused and angry because of it.

Sharpy waves a hand, saying, “Look, he’s being a little less subtle about it, maybe, but it’s not like Kaner’s ever been a big fan of being where you’re not.”

“What are you talking about? We spend so much time together because we have to! It’s our job!” They’re also best friends, obviously, but it’s not like they sit around braiding each other’s hair and getting matching friendship bracelets or whatever Sharpy’s implying. 

“Tazer, you see each other multiple times a day for work alone, and with all of Chicago to choose from, Kaner still picked an apartment less than ten minutes away from you. Did you think that was a coincidence?”

“It’s a good area!”

Sharpy rolls his eyes. “I’m going to explain this to you once, and because I’m such a great friend, I’m not even going to bring up how pathetic it is that you need it explained at all, but Kaner loses it when you’re not around, and it doesn’t matter what age he is. When he’s a little kid, he throws a temper tantrum. When he’s an adult, he gets drunk and punches cabbies. Either way, Kaner’s a complete disaster unless you’re there to stop him. Why do you think he acts that way in the first place?”

“Are you saying this is my fault?”

Sharpy looks at him despairingly. “I”m saying there’s nothing remotely new about Kaner throwing fits to get your attention and keep it there as long as possible.”

Johnny just stares at him blankly, and Sharpy adds, “I haven’t seen you do much to discourage that behavior, either.”

Johnny glances over at Kaner’s sleeping form again, and thinks about how easily he folded when Kaner started to cry at the mere suggestion that Johnny might go to New Jersey without him, or anywhere else, for that matter. Thinks about the strange shiver of relief he’d felt but worked so hard to ignore at the time.

“He needs looking after,” he says in the end, a weak defense, but also the only one Johnny’s got. Or is willing to think about, at least.

Sharpy just clamps him on the shoulder and says, “You’re certainly the man for the job.”

\---

He has trouble sleeping that night, more so than usual since Kaner changed, lying awake, unable to stop thinking about what Sharpy said. It doesn’t even matter if Sharpy’s right or wrong, because the idea’s wormed its way into Johnny’s brain now, and he can’t get it out.

It’s not even the thought that Kaner might act out, even as an adult, to get Johnny’s attention that bothers him. It’s how easily Johnny always gives in, how easy it is to pay a little extra attention to Kaner when Johnny’s always so fixated on him by default anyway.

That’s something he wants to think about even less, not just that he focuses on Kaner a little too much, but the reasons he does, the ways that go so far beyond being a good friend or captain. 

There’s no way Johnny’s thinking about any of that with Kaner lying next to him, innocent as the day he was born, so Johnny rolls over on his side, and punches his pillow a few times, imagining it’s his own face.

\---

The next day, they’re scheduled to play against the Blues, and Johnny’s woken to a courier delivering a package addressed to “Little Kaner c/o Captain No Fun” with Johnny’s address scribbled underneath. 

Johnny narrows his eyes, recognizing Oshie’s lazy handwriting.

Kaner gets angry on Johnny’s behalf when he reads the label, but that doesn’t stop him from tearing into the package gleefully.

It turns out to be a little teddy bear wearing a St. Louis jersey.

Kaner holds in his hands for a long time, a thoughtful look on his face and then he hands the bear to Johnny, getting up off the ground and marching over to his stack of art supplies on Johnny’s coffee table.

Johnny watches Kaner rifle around in his little case of markers until he finds one of he permanent-forever markers he used the first day Johnny brought him home. 

“Hold it still,” Kaner says, positing the bear to face him in Johnny’s hands, and he does what Kaner asks, holding the bear up while Kaner writes something on the jersey, his tongue half stuck out of his mouth in concentration.

When he’s done, Kaner takes a step back to survey his handiwork, and then grins triumphantly, cackling to himself and holding out his hand for a fist bump like Johnny taught him.

After that important piece of business is taken care of, Johnny turns the bear around to see what Kaner wrote, and laughs helplessly. Kaner’s crossed out “Blues” and written “Crybabies” instead, so now the logo reads the “St. Louis Crybabies” and Kaner’s tried to make the logo into a giant teardrop.

Johnny fists bumps Kaner again, and then makes Kaner hold the bear back up, giving a big thumbs to to the camera while Johnny takes a picture of him with his phone to send to T.J.

\---

Johnny’s feeling pretty good going into the game, but it gets ugly fast, and he’s definitely not smiling when they’re down two by the end of the second and showing no signs of finding their legs when they go back out there for the third.

To make matters worse, he fucks up a pass that leads to the Blues getting a breakaway and the game winning goal, and Johnny’s shaking a bit, he’s so angry, when he’s peeling his gear off after the game.

Kaner’s not allowed into the locker room until the press is out, and Johnny isn’t sure he could be around Kaner just now, anyway.

After a loss like this, the old Kaner would be yapping at his heels, picking at everything Johnny did wrong until he got mad enough to blow, until he yelled or tried to fight Kaner or whatever it took to release the furious tension threatening to choke him like it is now, until he could eventually laugh about it, or at least laugh at how easy it is to beat Kaner up a little.

It gets the job done, one way or another, and it’s weird, the way Johnny feels like he misses Kaner more now than he did when they were in the middle of losing so badly without him.

\---

Kaner won’t settle that night, upset about the game himself and pouting all over again about not being able to play.

He’s latched onto the idea that if he was his normal self again, they wouldn’t have lost, and it seems like it’s the first time it’s really bothered Kaner, being so small again. It was one thing when Kaner realized he wasn’t older than his sisters at the moment, that tantrum was quieted easily enough with assurances that Kaner was still the best big brother - in the world - and a ride on Johnny’s shoulders around the apartment.

Now, it’s already the middle of the night, and Kaner’s reeling back and forth from sulking and not looking at Johnny to manically running around the apartment, throwing stuff at Johnny whenever he tries to get close.

Johnny holds it together as best he can, but by four AM he’s so tired and angry he can’t think straight, and when Kaner smashes the framed picture Johnny has of him and Kaner with the Stanley Cup, he loses it, yelling, “Grow up!” so loudly it seems to shake the building, almost.

Kaner freezes, staring at him in a stunned, betrayed way.

Johnny gapes at him, horrified with himself, and Kaner shouts, “I’m trying!” and then runs into the guest bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Staring at the closed door, Johnny finally realizes how that sounded. Coming out of his mouth, he hadn’t meant it like Kaner thinks - it was the kind of thing he said to Kaner all the time, reflexive, habitual anger at his childlike behavior, all the more frustrating when he knew Kaner was capable of so much more. It wasn’t - as a six-year-old, Kaner’s usually easier to corral than Kaner at twenty-three, but he’s probably going to be harder to apologize to. 

Johnny doesn’t really think a case of beer and a grunt in Kaner’s general direction is going to get the job done in this instance, anyway.

He starts by knocking on the door, instead of just going in, and waits until he hears a loud sniff and then nothing before forgoing an invitation.

Kaner’s tucked up against the back corner of the room, his knees pressed tight to his chest, arms wrapped around them.

He looks up at Johnny accusingly and says, “You like him better than me.”

Johnny crosses the room swiftly, crouching down beside Kaner and saying, “It’s not that, buddy. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Kaner just shakes his head and says, “But you _do_. You want me to go away so he can come back!”

“I don’t--”

“I heard you!” Kaner shouts, lashing out, punching Johnny in the stomach.

It doesn’t really make an impact, but Johnny’s shocked enough by it to rock back on his knees, staring at Kaner incredulously.

“What are you talking about?”

“You were talking! To the reporter people! They asked you about the game and you said it was a tough loss and you really missed having 88 out on the ice!”

“Kaner, you’re not supposed to be in there when the press is talking to me,” Johnny stalls.

But Kaner just shoves him again, and says, “You don’t want me here, you want him back!”

Johnny’s heart breaks once, just hearing the pain in Kaner’s voice, and then a second time, when he realizes it’s true. Or close enough to still make him feel like a complete dick, anyway. 

He can’t lie to Kaner about it, but he can sigh, and try to let his face show how sorry he is, and that seems to be enough for Kaner, at least enough for him to allow Johnny to gather him up into a hug, holding him tight and saying, “It’s not you or him, Pat. You’re the same person, you’ll still be here, you’ll just be big again. Yourself again.”

“What if I don’t remember?” Kaner says, snuffling a little against Johnny’s shirt and then looking up at him imploringly.

Johnny puts his thumb to Kaner’s cheek, wiping the tears away, and says, “Then I’ll tell you all about it, help you to not forget.”

“Promise?” Kaner sniffs.

Johnny nods solemnly, suddenly realizing that of all the promises he’s made to Patrick, this is probably going to be the hardest to keep, and says, “I promise.”

\---

Things are a bit strained in the morning. Kaner’s got bags under his eyes, and he’s being really quiet, like he doesn’t want to be a bother or make any trouble, which isn’t behavior Johnny’s used to having to deal with from Kaner at any age. 

Johnny was up most of the night tossing and turning, awake long after they finally got into bed. He never noticed that Kaner was awake with him, but the way he’s drooping into his cereal bowl listlessly and hasn’t even demanded a juice box yet makes Johnny think Kaner’s just a really good faker. The thought worries him, makes him think about other things Kaner might have been hiding from him this whole whole time, but there’s really nothing to be done about it now.

He lets himself obsess about it anyway, just until their breakfast is done, and then they have to get ready for practice. Well, Johnny has to get ready for practice, and obviously Kaner’s coming along. 

Johnny just hopes Kaner’s gotten over hating everyone on the team for getting to play with Johnny when he can’t, because Johnny can’t miss practice, and he sure as hell isn’t going to leave Kaner at home alone, but he doesn’t really want to spend the whole time making sure Kaner doesn’t streak out onto the ice to try and fight the entire team at once or anything like that. 

Johnny tries to get Kaner to perk up on the ride over, putting on a 90’s radio station and finding himself in the embarrassing position of hoping Kaner will still sing along with the Backstreet Boys like he does so shamelessly as an adult, but he stays silent, looking out the window, a pinched, concentrated expression on his little face. 

Kaner gets out of the car by himself right away and then shoots Johnny an impatient look while he’s grabbing his bag from the trunk.

Johnny shrugs at him, saying, “What?”

Kaner just shakes his head, and it’s weird. He looks so frustrated and pissed off that just for a second, Johnny feels like the old Kaner is back with him instead.

He never thought he’d miss Kaner being furious at him for reasons he doesn’t even understand, but apparently Johnny is just that far gone.

He shakes his head at himself, and follows after Kaner’s quick, determined footsteps into the rink. 

\---

Whatever has Kaner so miffed doesn’t become any clearer during practice, although Johnny noticed a pronounced silence from Kaner’s whistle throughout. Johnny got hit twice, and had the puck stolen from him a dozen times, but Kaner didn’t so much as pick up his whistle, never mind blow it, from what Johnny can tell.

When Johnny skates over to the bench where Kaner’s been watching after they’re done, Kaner has the same intense, almost painfully focused expression on his face as he did in the car, and he takes a deep breath before spending the next three minutes straight ruthlessly critiquing how Johnny was playing.

Kaner’s out of breath and a little red in the face when he’s done, but Johnny is left wordless and gaping, because for those three minutes, Kaner had sounded exactly like himself, pissed and cocky and calling Johnny on every inch of his shit.

Johnny’s not prepared for how intensely he wants to yell back, not even because Kaner was wrong about any of what he said, because he wasn’t, the opposite, actually. The fact that Kaner was right about everything he was telling Johnny just makes him want to yell back at Kaner more, just to feel like they’re their normal selves again, not just Kaner, but Johnny too.

All this time, he’s been trying not to think about how much he misses his own Kaner, the one he’s known for the past five years, the one he’s fought with, won with, gotten drunk and stupid with, the one he’d had to work so hard not to think about when he’s alone in the dark, because there was another Kaner to worry about, to take care of, to be there for. But the sad fact is, he does miss Kaner, and maybe even worse, Johnny almost feels like he misses... himself. 

Obviously he’s right here, nothing’s happened to him, but not having Kaner around - not having him be the person Johnny’s gotten so dependent on to push back when Johnny pushes him, to make fun of him, to draw him out of his shell - is coming together to make Johnny realize it’s not just Kaner that he doesn’t recognize like this. It’s himself, too, like the person Johnny only is and can only ever be when he’s with Patrick - when they’re together like they’re supposed to be - has somehow been lost in the translation of the friend Johnny knows into this younger version. Johnny doesn’t know how to be who is he without Kaner anymore, and even though he’s tried to convince this Kaner the differences don’t matter, or at least don’t make Kaner _less_ , Johnny can’t stop himself from wanting his own Kaner back, from needing him. 

He doesn’t like thinking about it, but he can’t stop, not even with the six-year-old Kaner standing right in front of him, starting to look more like his young self again, worried and unsure, afraid he’s gone too far.

“I’m trying to be better, to be what you need again,” Kaner says, the uncertainty not showing in his tone, so fierce and angry and Johnny has to grab Kaner’s shoulders and bend down to press a swift kiss to his forehead, a reassurance or a promise, although to which one of them, he doesn’t really know.

“You’re good, just like this, buddy,” he says, trying to make it clearer to at least one of them, but Kaner shakes his head, serious still, looking older again, at least in the eyes, knowledge there of struggle and years lived that no little kid should have. 

“You need me,” Kaner insists, and Johnny would laugh at him, at any other time, but he can’t do that now.

He nods, serious like he’s never been, not in his whole life, no matter what his reputation and nickname says. “We need each other.”

Kaner looks satisfied at that, finally, and he leans up on his tiptoes, kissing the side of Johnny’s jaw. It’s a simple, innocent gesture, but it makes Johnny’s heart clench painfully all the more for that, the easy, automatic way Kaner shows affection now, the same way Johnny can’t help hoping Kaner will keep showing it, even after he finally changes back. 

\---

Sometimes after he puts Kaner to bed Johnny wanders back out to the living room and watches TV for a little while before he's ready to crash. It's weird, having a couple of hours every night when he's left alone to think about all of this. Johnny doesn't feel like he's alone at all, because Kaner's asleep in the bedroom, and Johnny can feel that in ways beyond vaguely wondering what he can make them for breakfast in the morning or having his heart seize up in his chest every time he hears a noise and finds himself instantly terrified that something has happened to Kaner, that Kaner needs him. Johnny spends a healthy portion of these hours hovering in the doorway to his bedroom, leaning against the door jam and watching Kaner sleep. The time he doesn't spend like that finds him sitting on the couch with no idea what he's supposed to be watching, lost in thoughts of what all of this means. Whether it'll change things when Kaner changes back. Johnny's sure that it will have changed _him_ , and that's not something he could ever have expected. He doesn't quite know how yet, but he can't imagine getting Kaner back and having everything go back to how it was. It's not going to be like that. Johnny wonders if that change will have been something he might have chosen, given any kind of choice at all.

\---

Tonight when he turns off the TV and wanders through his dark condo, turning off lights and gravitating toward Kaner and the soft glow of his bedside lamp, Johnny isn't thinking about anything at all.

Kaner must have dibs on stressing out tonight, because when Johnny reaches his room Kaner is awake, lying on his back in the middle of the bed with this hands clasped around his 'St Louis Crybabies' teddy bear, held to his chest.

He doesn't move or turn toward Johnny when Johnny climbs into his side of the bed.

“How come you're awake, bud?” Johnny asks, shifting to lie on his side with his head pillowed on his arm.

Kaner doesn't say anything for a minute, but when he finally turns to Johnny it's with that determined set of his mouth that Johnny hasn't seen on his six-year-old face yet, is only familiar with when Kaner has to tell him he did something really stupid and needs Johnny's help. Johnny can't imagine why Kaner is looking at him like that now.

“Is something wrong?” Johnny prompts.

“Don't get mad,” Kaner starts, and if this situation hadn't already been too familiar it's getting painfully so now.

“I have to say some stuff,” Kaner says, sitting up and clutching at his teddy bear so hard Johnny can see his knuckles are nearly as white as the bear's fur.

“Okay,” Johnny says, and he's trying to stay calm but he's pretty terrified. He doesn’t have a clue what Kaner could have to say, so serious like this. Has Johnny done something wrong? Somehow upset Kaner?

“I know we're bff when I'm big, and I know you like me a ton no matter what size I am,” Kaner begins, speaking to the top of his bear's head and paraphrasing something Johnny had reassured him just earlier today, “but I know I'm not supposed to be little, and I know it's not your job to take care of me and bring me juice and let me sleep here so I don't get scared.”

Kaner takes a breath and fidgets with the cuff of his pajamas for a second before he continues, but he could say nothing at all for the next week and Johnny wouldn't interrupt, because his heart is beating painfully hard in his chest, and he's pretty sure he couldn't speak if he had to.

“I wanted to say 'thank you'. Thank you for letting me stay with you, and for taking care of me, and for being my friend.”

Kaner looks up at Johnny when he's finished speaking, and Johnny takes a deep breath, holds it so he doesn't do something really dumb like start to cry.

Kaner shuffles out from under the covers and crawls over to where Johnny's lying, leans down to hug Johnny and press his cheek in against Johnny's shoulder when he says “I love you,” and Johnny does tear up then. He wraps his arm around Kaner's shoulders and hugs him tighter so he doesn't see, but he thinks Kaner must get a little emotional too because he wipes his nose on Johnny's sleeve before he pulls away and climbs back under the covers in the middle of the bed.

Johnny lies facing him, watching his eyelids gently fall shut until Johnny thinks he's fallen asleep, but the second he closes his eyes Kaner speaks again.

“'Bye, Tazer,” he says sleepily, and suddenly Johnny is wide awake.

“What do you mean, 'bye'? You're not going anywhere. Are you?” Johnny seizes up, half terror half something like excitement that makes him feel guiltier than he knows how to deal with.

But Kaner doesn't open his eyes again, just yawns and says,

“Not yet,” and goes to sleep.

\---

Johnny sleeps restlessly. It feels like he startles awake every couple of minutes, but it’s easy enough to roll over and go back to sleep without even really realizing that he’d woken in the first place. Some time around three or four AM, though, he wakes up and it’s not so easy to get back to sleep. He lies there, blinking away the spider web memories of dreams he’s not sure he had, dreams of Kaner and him and being chased through the dark, down spiralling stairwells and up onto rooftops he feels like he fell from a hundred times. He can’t catch his breath until he turns onto his side and sees Kaner sleeping soundly next to him. 

Kaner’s still there. Johnny has nothing to be scared of. 

He still finds himself looking for the rise and fall of Kaner’s chest as he breathes, though, some new habit of Johnny’s that he hadn’t noticed he’d picked up until he froze with fear every time he woke up and Kaner was still, not twisting and kicking in his sleep or up and running around the apartment already. 

Johnny isn’t used to seeing Kaner still, definitely not in the easy, peaceful ways he rests in his sleep, and it’s just another way that this version of Kaner is different. Johnny doesn’t like to think about the differences, tries to see them all as part of the bigger picture of Patrick Kane in all of his terrible and amazing glory. 

Kaner sighs in his sleep and Johnny thinks about this Kaner. About Kaner as a kid, curled up and sleeping soundly without a care in the world. Johnny wants to remember this moment, how Kaner’s face looks smoothed free of worries and thoughts he won’t tell Johnny, things he won’t say to him or anyone else. 

Johnny thinks about Kaner when he changes back, closing up again and folding back in on himself, hiding from Johnny in all the ways they aren’t with one another, all that they don’t articulate or admit to. Johnny wants that back. He wants the chance to work on the ways they’ve failed one another. 

Taking care of Kaner has made Johnny want to keep on taking care of Kaner, no matter how hard that might be, no matter what happens when things go back to normal. 

Johnny looks at Kaner, tiny and safe here with him, and he lets the hold sleep has on him pull him back under. 

This time, he doesn’t dream. 

\---

Kaner’s gone when Johnny wakes up.

The spot beside him on the bed is cold, and the whole condo feels still, settled, in a way it hasn’t once, not since Kaner’s been staying with him.

There are no early morning cartoons blaring from the living room, no scritching sounds of Kaner drawing on paper or the delighted giggles that usually accompany him drawing on himself, nothing at all to indicate Kaner’s still in the apartment with him.

Johnny lies in bed for another minute, frozen with a fear he doesn’t even know how to name, not sure if he’s more afraid Kaner’s changed back or that he hasn’t.

As soon as his feet hit the floor, though, Johnny’s sure of at least one thing. No matter how old Kaner is, Johnny doesn’t like waking up without him.

\---

He searches the apartment, checking in the weird places Kaner sometimes liked to hide in, lying in wait to jump out at Johnny and give him premature grey hairs, double-checking Kaner’s favorite spots long after he’s accepted, somewhere low in his gut, that Kaner’s not going to be found.

He circles back to his bedroom, and notices for the first time that some of his drawers are open, clothes hanging out haphazardly. On closer inspection, Johnny discovers that one of his favorite pairs of jeans and the shrunken, faded Jets T-shirt he’s had since he was a teenager but hasn’t been able to convince himself to throw away are both missing.

He goes out into his front hall, and sure enough, a pair of his shoes are gone too. 

Johnny swallows painfully, struggling to breathe, and his eyes fall on the hook where Kaner usually hangs his whistle, and it’s not there anymore, either. 

Patrick must have taken that with him when he left, too. 

That breaks Johnny, somehow, forcing a conscious acknowledgement of the reality of Kaner’s change in a way nothing else has quite managed to.

There are a million things he should do - people he should call, probably starting with Kaner himself. If he’s really back, there’s so much they’re going to have to talk about, so many feelings Johnny doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to keep buried anymore. But in that moment, all Johnny can do is give in when the strength goes from his legs, sinking to the floor, knees tucked up against him, trying to remember how to be the person he was before, trying to ignore the feeling in his chest that seems so much like grief. 

\---

After a few minutes, Johnny peels himself off the floor, fully intending to suck it up and start getting ready for his day. He’s got morning skate in a couple hours, and it’s not like he didn’t spend the past twenty-three years getting along just fine without Kaner chattering in his ear while he drank his coffee and ate breakfast, but when he looks at the empty kitchen table, and thinks about sitting down at it alone, Johnny just can’t face it.

He’s got three hours until he has to be at the UC, and he should spend that time tracking down Kaner, letting people know he’s changed back, but instead, Johnny heads straight for the guest room, not even pausing in front of his own bedroom door, and crawls into bed, movements slow and jerky like all his limbs are already asleep.

He pulls the blankets up over his head, face smushed down against a pillow, and closes his eyes tight, repeating the alphabet backwards in his head, over and over, until he eventually falls back asleep.

\---

Johnny wakes up maybe twenty minutes later, possibly even less, and stares at the ceiling for a long time, working hard to think of nothing at all.

That works for about an hour, and then Johnny’s kicking away the blankets, disgusted with himself, but at least giving himself a heated lecture about manning the fuck up helps distract him from how empty the apartment feels.

He dresses on autopilot, gym clothes for now, and avoids looking anywhere except right in front of him as he grabs a bottle of vegetable juice on his way out the door.

Johnny’s building has a full gym in the basement, and it’s a dumb idea to work himself to exhaustion when he has skate in less than two hours and a game that night, but Johnny needs to not be thinking right now, and exercise is the best way he knows to shut off his brain that doesn’t involve head injury or alcohol, neither of which he’s willing to risk at the moment.

He gets on the treadmill, because he hates just running and not going anywhere, and he’s in the mood to torture himself more than a little.

It feels good to be angry, the way he gets so easily running on the spot, staring at the wall in front of him, and as he moves Johnny lets every mean-spirited thought and short-tempered word he’s held back from Kaner the whole time he was changed clog his pores, thinks about every annoying thing Kaner did, every time he scared Johnny, every time he pissed him off but Johnny couldn’t stay mad at his tiny, trusting face long enough to even care.

By the time he has to head back upstairs and get ready to drive to the rink, Johnny’s almost got himself convinced he hates Kaner, just a little. Just enough to be able to hold it together, he hopes, when he finally sees Kaner again, real and whole, and maybe not quite Johnny’s, not anymore. 

\---

Johnny takes so many deep breaths when he's walking into the rink that he starts to get lightheaded. Every single step of the way he's thinking about turning on his heel and running away, but he can't. He has to do this.

He doesn't even know what it is he's afraid of.

That he's going to see Kaner and want to punch him in the face, mostly. That he's going to see Kaner and want to fold him up in his arms and never let him out of his sight ever again, a little more.

The truth is – Johnny has no idea how he's going to react. He doesn't know how Kaner feels. He doesn't know how _he_ feels. So all he can do is walk in there and ... do whatever needs to be done.

By the time he gets to the locker room most of the team are already there, in various stages of undress and yelling and talking over one another. The noise dies down when Johnny walks in, and guys shift minutely out of the way almost subconsciously until Johnny has a clear path to Kaner, sitting taping up his stick across the room.

Johnny knows that the way everything else - every sight and noise in the room - dies away until all he can see is Kaner is just him, just his relief and frustration and fear surging up through him and making his head spin.

Kaner doesn’t look at him, but Johnny can tell from the way his hands start to shake that he knows Johnny has arrived. Johnny watches him fuck up his tape job twice, stands stock still even when he sees the muscle in Kaner’s jaw jump under the strain of how he’s clenching his teeth, his knuckles white around his stick. Johnny thinks about last night, about Kaner’s knuckles locked up around his teddy bear just before he told Johnny he loved him. Johnny’s stomach lurches, and he sits heavily in his stall, vaguely eyeing the trash can in the corner in case he throws up. 

He shuts down. He goes right back to autopilot. He suits up and carefully pulls on every single piece of equipment like it’s going to hold him in, keep him together somehow. The more padding he pulls over his head and secures to his body the better he feels, like the more layers that lie between him and Kaner the easier this will be. 

No one else says anything. Not to him. Guys are talking quietly to Kaner, shaking his hand and slapping him heartily on the back. Stally hugs Kaner so enthusiastically he lifts him clear off his feet, and when Johnny catches Kaner’s eye over Stalberg’s shoulder he realizes he was stupid to think he might throw up, because he’s so fucking empty, so _void_ of anything to throw up that he doesn’t even know how he’s walking and breathing and functioning right now. His bones feel like they’re made out of ash, solid for nothing but the sharp ache stitched through every little move he makes, the pain the only thing that makes him think maybe he’s still alive at all. 

Everyone is quick to change and head out to the ice, but Johnny takes his time, waves Sharpy off when he feels a heavy hand fall to his shoulder, and he sits and stares at his skates until he thinks the room is empty. 

When he looks up, Kaner is still sitting in his stall, doing exactly the same thing. 

Eventually, Kaner moves. He gets to his feet like his limbs are made of lead and practically lurches over to Johnny. 

He doesn’t look at Johnny, keeps his eyes trained on his own feet even when he comes to stand right in front of Johnny, toes almost touching. 

“Thanks,” he says, and the word is raw, cleaved from some deep, hidden place in Kaner that Johnny doesn’t recognize, doesn’t know the sound of. 

And that’s what finally makes him snap. 

Johnny’s already done the part where he was afraid, and then the part where he was lonely and hurt. He’s done the part where he got mad at himself, doubted himself, finally admitted things he’d never meant to acknowledge, and he’d done all of this with nothing but Kaner in mind, Kaner’s well being at heart and Kaner’s needs - whatever they were at the time - at the absolute forefront of all else, for Johnny. 

Kaner ran away, and he shouldn’t have, but Johnny could understand that he’d probably been frightened, more scared and confused now than he could have been when he was suddenly six years old for no apparent reason whatsoever. 

But here Kaner is now, standing in front of him, thanking Johnny with words that they don’t use, in a voice Johnny has never heard. 

Johnny can’t do this again. 

He stands up and shoves Kaner away from him, pushes him back out of his way. 

“You already said that,” Johnny says, and he hopes it hurts as much as he means it to. 

\---

Skating with Kaner again is easy. It’s so easy, in fact, that for the whole practice, Johnny forgets to be angry, forgets to be afraid. The whole team gets a lift having Kaner back with them, even if he’s still not quite acting like himself. Or maybe he is, and it’s Johnny who hasn’t fully adjusted yet. Kaner’s playing like himself, at least, and for as long as they’re together on the ice, that’s all that matters. Kaner won’t really look at Johnny, but he’ll pass to him, and for now, that’s enough.

When they’re all changing in the locker room after, Johnny hangs back, watching Kaner get playfully jostled and chirped by the boys, trying to summon the cold fury that was guarding him before, but it won’t come.

Johnny sees Kaner’s wide, sleazy grin, hears him laugh at something Sharpy said, and only wishes he’d been the one to put the smile on Kaner’s face in the the first place.

\---

Johnny sits in the parking lot for twenty minutes, his mind stuck, body immobile, until he realizes he’s waiting for Kaner. Expecting him on some unconscious level, lingering in this space, waiting for Kaner to come and fill it up, to share it with Johnny.

Given the way he peels out of the parking lot immediately after realizing this, recklessly fast and not even looking where he’s going, just needing to be gone, Johnny’s frankly amazed he doesn’t get into another accident. 

\---

After that, Johnny has to go home and pack for their flight out to Nashville.

He's so caught up in thinking about practice - about Kaner being himself again and how he seems to think that that means things are somehow no different and yet inexplicably more difficult between them – that Johnny doesn't even realize how little he wants to be home alone right now until he closes the door behind himself and feels like he shouldn’t be here, like this isn’t his home anymore, hardly seems like 'his' at all.

The last time he'd walked through this door he'd been arguing with Kaner about the merits of eating an entire bag of red vines for dinner and why there were precisely none. Kaner had been giggling, struggling out of the brand new raincoat that’s still hanging up in Johnny’s hall with his own, and Johnny had been shaking his head and laughing right along with him, because it had been impossible to keep a straight face when Kaner was happy, when Kaner was smiling.

Johnny doesn't know what to do with an apartment this empty, when it suddenly seems ten times the size it had been before, and like more space, more silence than Johnny could ever need. He'd never needed a place this big, but he'd never felt lost in it, either. Kaner had been here for just over a week, and Johnny feels like he's never going to be able to look at his couch and not think of Kaner vaulting over the arm of it, dive-bombing onto the cushions, or sit at the island in his kitchen without seeing Kaner sitting up on the counter, kicking his feet against the cupboards and reminding Johnny to cut the crusts off his sandwich.

He hopes it's a temporary thing. That he'll slowly get used to being here alone, like he had to get used to having Kaner here in the first place. In no time at all being here by himself won't feel strange or lonely.

Johnny just isn't sure that's what he wants.

He shakes his head and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes for a second, stands and breathes and remembers how to think and function like a capable human being, and then he walks briskly through his condo, past the kitchen, by the couch, not stopping till he gets to his bedroom.

He can't go in.

Johnny hovers in the doorway. He looks at the unmade bed, at how the covers are mussed all over, not just on one side like they are when Johnny sleeps alone.

He forces himself to think about Kaner, twenty-three years old again now and running drills with Johnny like nothing happened.

Johnny sidesteps the bed entirely, turning away from it as he pulls things from his drawers and all but fires them in the general direction of his suitcase, still open on the floor of his closet since their New Jersey trip.

Once he's packed, he turns to the bed, determined. He grabs hold of the bottom corner of the comforter and drags it towards him, intent on stripping the sheets as fast as he can, bundling this mess into the laundry basket and leaving it for his cleaning lady to deal with later.

But when he pulls back the duvet, Kaner's St Louis 'Crybabies' bear comes tumbling off the bed with it, and Johnny's stomach does a somersault right alongside it.

He doesn't know if he's more upset because Kaner didn't take the bear with him, or because he left it there for Johnny to find, for Johnny to keep.

Johnny scoops it up off the floor, and sits down in the mess of sheets and bedding with his back against the bed. He brings his knees up in front of him and sits the bear on top of them, holding it with both hands. The giant tear drop that Kaner had fashioned from the logo is starting to smudge, still a little damp where Kaner must have drooled on it in his sleep last night. Before he'd turned back.

Johnny's phone beeps, reminding him he has to leave for the airport in ten minutes.

He gets to his feet, still holding the bear, and carries it with him when he retrieves his suitcase and leaves it by the door, props the bear up on his dresser while he changes into his suit, and holds it in one hand when he steps into his shoes and pockets his keys.

The last thing he does before he leaves is look at the bear one last time. He presses his face into its fur and closes his eyes, and he's not saying goodbye to the bear, or to anything that's ever happened between him and Kaner. He's making some kind of promise, he thinks. Some commitment to honor this ridiculous stuffed animal and everything he represents.

Johnny drops a kiss on the bear’s head, and leaves it sitting in the middle of the couch. He looks at it once more as he closes the door and heads out. 

\---

He doesn’t see Kaner until they’re lining up on the tarmac to get on the plane. 

Kaner’s standing with Hayes, and they’re laughing. Hayes is doing some kind of an impression, hands waving in the air, and it takes Johnny a second, but eventually he realizes Jimmy is doing an imitation of himself being chased by Kaner when he was still little. 

Johnny waits for a flare of jealously or anger, but mostly he’s just glad to see Kaner happy, glad he’s reacting to at least part of what happened to him with good humor, even if he still won’t look at Johnny, even if the only words they’ve said to each other since he turned back have been used to hurt, intentionally or not. 

As they’re boarding, Johnny sees Kaner struggling with his bag, and automatically reaches out to steady him, grabbing the strap and adjusting it more securely on his shoulder.

He smooths out the collar of Kaner’s coat as an afterthought, and doesn’t realize what he’s doing until Kaner stares at him, eyes guarded, hiding hope or anger, Johnny can’t tell which.

Johnny swallows down an apology, something that felt like a lie on his tongue, and turns away, getting on the plane without giving Kaner a second look.

\---

Johnny sleeps on the plane, or tries to. He’s exhausted enough that he manages it after the first twenty minutes, despite the lack of legroom and the strangeness of not having Kaner beside him.

When Johnny wakes up just as they’re landing, he looks up and sees Kaner watching him, his face a mask. As soon as Johnny tries to smile at him, even just make proper eye contact, Kaner turns away, getting out of his seat and off the plane.

\---

They don’t have time to do more than drop off their bags in their hotel room before it’s time for the team dinner, so Johnny doesn’t have to think about how weird it’s going to be to share a room with Kaner again tonight.

It shouldn’t be weird at all, Johnny’s even more used to sleeping with Kaner now than he was before this all happened, but it’s how much Johnny’s looking forward to it, just lying in the dark beside him, falling asleep to the sound of Kaner breathing that’s the problem.

They’re eating in one of the conference rooms in the hotel, and Johnny and Kaner ride down in the elevator together, carefully not looking at one another.

Johnny wants to ask Kaner how he’s doing, check if he needs anything, but he stays quiet, thinking that the set of Kaner’s jaw, the tight, wary way he’s holding himself as far back from Johnny as possible is enough on it’s own to tell Johnny what Kaner needs from him right now, loud and clear.

Trouble is, space has always been the one thing Johnny’s never quite known how to give him.

\---

They line up for food together, Johnny in front of Kaner, and Johnny is careful not to look over his shoulder to make sure Kaner’s still close by, having to work hard to check the impulse. It’s difficult to remember that Kaner can take care of himself again now, that he doesn’t need to be always locked in Johnny’s sights.

He’s so busy curbing the impulse to keep at least one eye on Kaner at all times that Johnny moves unthinkingly, piling up a plate with foods he doesn’t even like, turning around and handing it over to Kaner and then immediately grabbing a second plate for himself.

When he’s gotten his own food, Johnny heads for the nearest table, and can’t help but look behind him, checking to make sure Kaner’s following.

He’s not. He’s still standing in line, holding everyone else up, arms stretched out to hold the plate far away from himself, staring down at it. 

Johnny thinks again about apologizing, or trying to make a joke, but he knows everything on there is stuff Kaner likes, and importantly, it’s also stuff he can be eating, healthy stuff, a careful balance Johnny had to learn pretty quick, when he was solely responsible for feeding Kaner. He’s not going to apologize for doing a good job, even if it’s not really his place, anymore. 

“Just eat it, Kaner,” he snaps, and it’s like his voice has Kaner on a string, immediately tugging him towards Johnny, his footsteps clumsy at first, but picking up quickly.

Kaner sits down at the table Johnny was heading to, and a second later, Johnny sits down with him.

“It’s good,” Kaner says, after a few minutes of eating in silence, gesturing down at the pasta Johnny plated for him with his fork.

Johnny shrugs, and then shoves a forkful of chicken into his mouth so he doesn’t have to reply.

\---

The game is nothing like practice, where Johnny still felt removed from Kaner, like he was watching Kaner play with the rest of the team from behind thick plated glass, even when they were passing to each other, shouting across the ice. 

He almost hadn’t been able to feel it, playing with Kaner before, but during the game they’re themselves again, like no time has passed, like nothing has changed, and Johnny is surprised by how much he minds, even when they win. 

He wants them to be successful, he wants them to be good, together and as a team, but it’s strange to see Kaner working so hard to be normal when Johnny can’t stop wanting them to be different, to be more. It’s strange to seek Kaner out and not find him already waiting. 

He’ll take the win, though, and the smile on Kaner’s face after, even if it fades pretty quickly, when his eyes meet Johnny’s.

\---

Back in their hotel room, finally alone together, Johnny has to sit down hard on his bed and stare at his hands to stop himself from unpacking Kaner’s things, from asking him if he wants to stay up for awhile and talk, or just go to bed.

That’s none of his business anymore, even if they are sharing a room.

If Kaner wants to stay up and watch TV, he will, and he doesn’t need to ask Johnny’s opinion about it. If Johnny wants to go to bed right now, he can do that too, and it doesn’t matter if Kaner gets bored or lonely, because he can just go down the hall and hang out with Sharpy or Hayes or whoever he wants on his own, now that he’s his old self again. 

Johnny ends up just staying on the bed doing nothing at all until Kaner disappears into the bathroom, probably brushing his teeth, getting ready for bed.

Johnny has to bite his lip to keep from automatically shouting at Kaner that he has to brush for two whole minutes, a hard fought battle every night they shared together when he was little. He’s already under the covers, his lamp off, by the time Kaner comes back out.

Johnny hopes Kaner can’t see the way he’s peering through his eyelashes at him as he stands in the middle of the room, stalled between the two beds. 

Johnny thinks he sees Kaner looking back at him, and just for a second his body cants forward, like he’s about to crawl into Johnny’s bed with him, but then Kaner takes a few quick steps backwards, his knees hitting the back of the other bed, falling into it clumsily.

Johnny’s tired from the game, he’s tired from the whole day, but he still can’t shake the feeling that it’s Patrick’s presence across the room that makes it so easy to fall asleep. Even if the bed does feel empty without him.

\---

Johnny boards the flight home before Kaner, and doesn’t let himself look back to see where Kaner sits, to check if he needs a hand getting his bags up into the overhead bin. 

While everyone else files on, Johnny sits and reads the sports section of a newspaper he’d grabbed before they left the hotel. Kaner had been standing across the lobby, juggling his phone in one hand and his ipod and a bottle of water in the other and Johnny had reached for anything at all to busy his own hands, snagging the closest thing to hand to distract himself. 

He’s catching up on baseball and football - the lesser sports, if you ask Johnny, but handy general conversational knowledge to have anyway - when Kaner pushes past him into the window seat next to him, almost knocking the newspaper out of Johnny’s hands as he goes. 

Kaner drops back into the seat and pulls out his phone. He doesn’t say a word to Johnny. 

Sometimes they sit together on flights and sometimes they don’t. Johnny can always tell in advance which it’s going to be, though. Kaner tends to play Johnny’s shadow for as long as either of them can stand, and then he’ll wander off and climb all over Sharpy for a flight, or sit by himself and stare out the window ignoring everyone else on the plane. Lately he’s taken to holding court with the rookies. 

He never sits with Johnny when they’re fighting, though. He stays as far as humanly possible from Johnny when they’re mad at one another. 

And yet - here he is. Sitting next to Johnny and totally ignoring him, looking nowhere but at his phone, even though Johnny thinks he can detect the hint of a blush high up on Kaner’s cheeks. He’s sitting as far from Johnny as he possibly can, almost huddled up against the window. 

But he’s here, in the seat next to Johnny, with Johnny when he doesn’t have to be. 

Kaner doesn’t look at him, doesn’t speak to him once, but he relaxes more in his seat the longer the flight goes on, the closer to home they get.

\---

They leave the airport the same way they came into it, sharing a charged silence that links them together at the same time it holds them apart, and Johnny and Kaner walk out to their separate cars without so much as a passing glance exchanged between them.

Johnny sleeps badly that night, if you can call it sleep at all. He tells himself it’s because the bed in the guest room is too short, his feet hanging off of it, but that does nothing to explain why he’s trying to sleep there in the first place.

Why he twitches awake at every imagined sound, never falling asleep deeply enough to dream.

\---

He’s in a bad mood when he gets up.

He’s in a bad mood when he drinks his coffee.

He’s in a bad mood when he drives to the UC.

He’s in a bad mood when he walks into the locker room and sees Kaner laughing, his arm around Shawsy’s shoulders.

He’s in a bad mood on the ice, when none of his passes connect with Kaner’s, when Kaner is too busy looking up into the stands at nothing to see Johnny right in front of him.

He’s in a bad mood when he leaves the UC and drives home alone.

\---

That night during the game, they _both_ lose it.

For the entire first period, it's like Kaner is doing everything he possibly can to piss Johnny off. He's driving to the net and then passing off to Sharpy instead of taking the shot himself, instead of setting Johnny up for a tip in. He's purposefully sending the puck to the crease through traffic, battling to get them into a position to score and then backing off, giving it up. Johnny screams at him to pass to him, to take the fucking shot, to stop playing around.

Kaner wasn’t like this last night. He wasn’t shutting himself off from Johnny and working hard to win in spite of him, like he seems to be doing tonight. It’s like he got a taste of what it meant for them to play together again in Nashville, and now he’s spitting that back in Johnny’s face. 

Every time they get back to the bench Johnny has to ask Kaner what his fucking problem is, why he's choking out there. Every single time Kaner listens and nods and then gets back out on the ice and does the same thing all over again.

Johnny gets a stick on one of Sharpy's rebounds and they score, but the Wild come right back not even two minutes later, and deflect a puck in up top when Razor's still finding his bearings after going to his knees to fend off a slapshot that Koivu tries to send five-hole.

The second they step off the ice Johnny is dragging Kaner back to the locker room, hooking his hands in under his pads and shaking him like he can knock his sense and focus back into place.

Kaner just takes it. Lets Johnny get up in his face and yell at him for a solid five minutes, and does nothing but keep on nodding even though Johnny knows he isn't listening to a word he's saying.

Kaner's stubborn. He always thinks he knows best, and a lot of the time he does, but when Johnny gives him some kind of instruction or points something out that makes sense, that will make them better together, he listens. Or at least, he used to.

They’re different in here, different when it’s about hockey and nothing at all to do with being friends. Hockey is part of everything they do, and sometimes their frustrations with one another in practice or during games will bleed over into when they go home at night, when they drive away from the UC. But that never happens in the reverse. Whatever is happening with them privately, they’re here to do their jobs, and nothing else should ever get in the way of that. 

Q gives them a stern talking to, and then looks at Johnny afterwards, eyes cutting to Kaner and then back so he can raise his eyebrows at Johnny and wordlessly ask if he's got this under control.

Johnny grits his teeth and nods.

The second period is more of the same. Kaner's playing his ass off, playing keep-away with the puck and skating through the Minnesota d-men like they're statues, his stick-handling so fast that Johnny keeps blinking sweat out of his eyes as he watches him, wonders if he's fucking seeing things.

Every time Kaner gets near the net he hands the pass off, drops the puck back or sends a saucer across to Sharpy, too hard and fast for Johnny to even have a chance at catching it on his tape.

After a couple of shifts of this and with no end to it in sight, Johnny loses his patience. He doesn't even wait for Kaner to get both feet over the boards before he's grabbing him and shoving him down onto the bench. He knocks Kaner's mouthguard out from between his teeth and punches him on the shoulder, on the pads, a jolt to make him fucking wake up and listen.

This time, Kaner fights back.

Johnny gets in his face and Kaner pushes him away and snaps his teeth at him like he's going to fucking bite Johnny or something.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing out there, Kaner, huh? Do you have any interest in winning this fucking game?”

Kaner shoves him again, hard enough this time that Johnny is knocked back against the boards.

“I don't need you to tell me how to do my fucking job,” he roars, and the bench falls quiet around them, no-one looking at them, but everyone clearly aware that they're getting into it here and now. Johnny would consider it a mark of respect that nobody steps in to stop them, but probably the entire team is just as sick of them as Johnny is, as Kaner has to be, and they're all hoping that one good blow up will clear the air.

Kaner is up off the bench now, looming over Johnny. He's dropped his stick and he drops his gloves now, too, shaking them off so he can grab two handfuls of Johnny's jersey and shove him back up against the glass behind the bench.

Q neatly steps out of the way, turns his back to them and bends to talk to Duncs.

Kaner's eyes lock on Johnny's, and Johnny feels like maybe he's the one about to spontaneously de-age, because he suddenly feels all of five years old. Kaner is all but snarling at him, so fucking angry Johnny can feel it radiating off him, charged in the air around them.

It's the first time Johnny can remember Kaner really looking at him since he changed back, and his breath leaves his lungs in a rush of relief and reassurance and something like _home_. Johnny wants to hug Kaner, wants to tackle him to the ground right now and punch him in the face for being such an unbelievable little fuck, but then he wants to bury his face in Kaner's neck and just fucking rest, stop thinking and yelling and fighting and fucking everything up and stay still for a second, silent and sure that they're gonna be fine.

“I don't need you to do a single fucking thing for me,” Kaner spits, but it's half-hearted at best, said with such hard fought effort that he breaks before the end, his voice cracking and his face falling.

He looks away from Johnny and his hands go lax in his jersey, and Johnny is the one who admits defeat. He gives up any pretense that he's willing to duke this out with Kaner, because he isn't. He's tired. He's exhausted, and he's aching in every single sense of the word. He wants his friend back. He wants Kaner to let him back in, to take care of Kaner in stupid little ways that Kaner doesn't really need, but allows anyway.

“It's not for you,” Johnny says. “It's for us. For me.”

Kaner doesn't look at him, but his mouth creases up in that ridiculous considering expression that seemingly hasn't changed after seventeen years, hopefully won't change after seventeen more. He nods, once, and Johnny feels like he's scored a hat trick, like he's halfway to winning another Cup. He floods with purpose, lights up for the tiny encouragement, and he's done pretending that he can pull his punches here, that he can walk away from this for even a day. This is where he needs to be, because this is what he wants. And he won't let Kaner pretend otherwise either, he's done letting Kaner hide. They're going to make it right.

But first, they've got a game to play. _This_ fight to win, together.

Johnny shoves Kaner one last time, but it's a gentle, fond little touch and Kaner actually looks at him again when it happens, looks up into Johnny's face and doesn't shut his expression off, doesn't hide his confusion or embarrassment or the beginnings of a smile from Johnny.

Q calls for the top line, and Johnny bends to pick up Kaner's stick and gloves. When Johnny hands them to him, Kaner says 'thanks', and it's half sarcastic, smart and sniped and music to Johnny's ears.

Kaner pauses when he's got one leg over the boards, and he smiles at Johnny.

Johnny scores on that shift. Kaner sends him a pass that seems to gravitate to Johnny's stick, the puck barely touching his tape before it's springing up past Hackett and the buzzer is sounding and Johnny doesn't even look at anyone else. He skates to Kaner and grabs him around the waist while Kaner's still got his arms in the air, celebrating the goal, and he knocks them both into the glass, pressing his face into Kaner's sweaty neck when he feels the rest of their teammates pile into the hug.

Johnny spins around to face Kaner after they fist bump the bench, and grins at him broadly.

“Good job, Kaner,” he says, all mocking. 

“Fuck you, Johnny,” Kaner says easily, but he's smiling too.

\---

From there on in it’s all smooth sailing. 

They win the game, Kaner scores a goal, and it’s almost like everything else just falls away - gets swept up by the wave of euphoria that comes with winning a hard fought game. 

Kaner hip checks Johnny in the locker room, and Johnny can’t stop smiling, is mildly terrified that he’ll never find cause to frown again, but of course Kaner helps with that too. He’s got all of Johnny’s bases covered tonight, it would seem. 

Everything is back to normal, both of them back to their old ways - comfortable in one another’s space, trading easy smiles and throwaway touches as they talk about the game, rake over everything they did right and wrong. 

And then Kaner leaves. 

He smiles at Johnny, and says goodnight, and walks away. 

Johnny stands in the parking lot and watches Kaner try to wheedle Hayes into giving him a piggyback to his car, and he has no idea what’s going on. 

Johnny watches Kaner drive away, yelling plans to meet up with the rookies for drinks, and Johnny can’t figure out what he’s done wrong. 

\---

The first hint Johnny gets that maybe it’s not _him_ that’s making mistakes tonight is when he blinks blearily between Kaner’s name flashing across the screen of his phone and the clock, and sees that it’s nearly four am. 

He thumbs ‘answer’, anyway, because chances to talk to Kaner are kind of thin on the ground these days and Johnny’ll take it any way he can get it. 

“Hello? Kaner?” 

“Johnny! Jonathan Toews! Captain Jonathan Toews!” 

Kaner is wasted. Johnny tries not to think of this as an opportunity. 

“Is everything okay, Kaner?” 

“No. You know it isn’t, Johnny. You know.” 

Johnny’s stomach sloshes like he’s the one who has probably been knocking back Irish Car Bombs for several hours at this point. 

“Yeah, bud. I know. Listen, where are you? I’ll come get you.” 

Johnny doesn’t want to have this conversation when Kaner’s drunk, but he doesn’t want him out there without whatever wits he has when he’s sober about him and nothing but rookies to rely on. He might be an adult again, but he’s still Patrick Kane. 

“I am at that place. The one … with the umbrellas like from Willy Wonka’s chocolate river boat? Orange. Very orange. They’re spinning!” 

Johnny knows exactly where Kaner’s talking about, but he hasn’t got time to worry about the truly disturbingly intimate levels their communication skills have reached, because he knows those umbrellas do not move, which means it’s Kaner that’s spinning. 

“Hang tight, Pat, I’m coming to get you.” 

“‘Kay. Knew you would,” is all Kaner says before he hangs up. 

\---

When Johnny tracks Kaner down he’s sitting on the curb outside the bar, and Shawsy is with him. 

Shawsy stands when Johnny pulls up, and starts to help Kaner to his feet, but Johnny jumps out of the car and rushes to his side, takes Kaner’s weight by pulling Kaner’s arm up around his shoulder and holding him steady with an arm around his waist. 

“He … I’m sorry?” Shawsy says, and Johnny wants to laugh, nearly does. 

He smiles instead. 

“Not a problem, Shawsy,” he says, and the really disturbing part is that he means it. 

Johnny gets Kaner into his car, and Kaner is so wasted he can barely sit up straight, slumps right over with his head between his knees in the front seat of Johnny’s car. 

But then he throws up on Johnny’s custom floor mat, and sits up straight, looking a lot brighter and happier for having emptied the (entirely liquid) contents of his stomach onto the floor of Johnny’s two hundred thousand dollar car. 

Kaner belches and then smiles at Johnny, and Johnny smiles back. 

His car fucking reeks, and he’s driving Kaner’s drunk ass around at four AM, and Johnny is pretty damn happy - all things considered. 

“It’s probably easier if you crash at my place?” Johnny says, and Kaner lurches toward him, clutches his arm and sways mostly on to Johnny’s side of the front seat. 

“No, don’t. I - don’t, Johnny. Not tonight. I can’t,” Kaner’s voice has that horrible pleading tone to it again, the ease and familiarity from his drunk dial gone, seeping into Johnny’s mat, maybe. 

“Can’t what?” Johnny asks, “what’s wrong with my place?” 

“Nothing,” Kaner says, and he sounds so close to tears that Johnny nearly totals his car again twisting in his seat to look at Kaner. 

Kaner isn’t crying. It’s worse. He’s staring at Johnny with huge, wide eyes, his mouth small and stained red from whatever he’s been drinking, red like it used to get when he’d drink more strawberry juices than Johnny had told him he could, and he’d look at Johnny just like this - scared and dependent, trusting and vulnerable. 

“Kaner - what -” 

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” Kaner says, and he even sounds like his six year old self right now, unsure and so emotional, tripping over words soaked heavy with feeling. 

“It’s … it doesn’t feel like your place anymore. Feels like … like … _ours_. Or … yours and his, or … mine, somehow. Don’t wanna go back, don’t make me, Johnny,” he says. 

Johnny can’t talk about this when Kaner’s like this. He can’t handle hearing what Kaner will say when he’s prepared to be totally honest, not yet. 

So Johnny takes Kaner back to his own place, and they don’t speak again, save for when Johnny gets Kaner tucked up in bed and can’t help it. 

He looks down at Kaner’s face, turned up toward him and smoothed free of years and worries when he falls asleep the second his head hits the pillows, and Johnny just can’t help it. 

He leans in and leaves a gentle kiss on each of Kaner’s eyelids, says softly, 

“‘Night, Kaner,” and goes home to sleep in his guest room again. 

\---

When Johnny shows up the next morning, juggling a tray of coffees, a bag of McMuffins, and an economy-size bottle of aspirin, Kaner’s door is still unlocked from when Johnny basically carried him inside the night before. At the time, Johnny had thought about stealing Kaner’s keys and locking up after himself, but it had been hard enough just to leave, to turn away from Kaner and not look back. Giving himself any excuse to delay or come back into the apartment would have undone all that hard work, and Johnny would have ended up staying, hovering over Kaner’s sleeping form, pushing his sweaty curls away from his face or rubbing his back when he inevitably threw up again.

However Kaner might have acted, drunk off his ass, Johnny’s pretty sure Kaner doesn’t want him doing stuff like that, doesn’t want Johnny thinking it’s his job, every minute, to be whatever Kaner needs. Kaner might have called Johnny, might have needed him just for that long, but he also flinched away from Johnny’s offer to take Kaner back to his place instead, practically begging to go back to his own apartment. The fragile sense of understanding Johnny thought they built in the tail-end of last night’s game has slipped away, uncertainty and resignation taking its place, and so when Kaner asked for space, Johnny found a way to give it to him.

He’s back now, of course, muscling right into Kaner’s space again, but after spending his morning cleaning Kaner’s vomit out of his car, Johnny feels well within his rights to show up at Kaner’s doorstep and demand satisfaction.

Or at least to be able to make sure Kaner hasn’t drowned in his own throw-up in the night.

Johnny would find that pretty satisfying, frankly. 

Luckily, Kaner’s still breathing when Johnny locates him, passed out in his bed, right where Johnny left him. Johnny shakes his head, but at which one of them, he’s not sure, because his heart seizes up with fondness he can’t quite force down or deny looking at Kaner’s face, slack from sleep and crushed against his mattress, his head having fallen off the pillow sometime in the night.

Johnny leaves the room to go put the stuff he brought with him on the island in the middle of Kaner’s kitchen, and then grabs three glasses of water from the cupboard, filling each up and lining them up on the island, too.

Then, he searches the place to find Kaner’s whistle. When he finds it, Johnny takes a second to try to figure out what it means that Kaner has it right next to him on his bedside table, and then bends down next to Kaner, blowing the whistle right in Kaner’s face.

Kaner’s whole body spasms, twisting in on itself protectively, his hands covering his ears, and he stares at Johnny in a kind of stunned horror so genuine Johnny can’t help but grin, just a little.

He likes taking care of Kaner, the week Kaner spent changed making it impossible for Johnny to deny exactly how much, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t also still enjoy fucking with Kaner, too. Whatever else Johnny feels for Kaner, there’s always going to be a vicious element of competition between them, the need to not just be there for each other, to make each other happy, but to make each other a little miserable, too. Even just so they can make it up to each other, after.

Johnny wouldn’t mind a little less hurt along the way, but there’s no way he’s giving up on that part of what they are entirely.

So he rocks back on his heels and enjoys the view of Kaner curled into a miserable ball on his bed, moaning and begging Johnny to, “Just let me die.”

“No chance, bud. Up and at ‘em.”

Kaner stares up at him balefully, but he takes the hand that’s offered, letting Johnny pull him to his feet.

“There’s water in the kitchen,” Johnny says, nodding behind him. “Aspirin too.”

“Coffee,” Kaner says pathetically.

“Water first,” Johnny says firmly, arms crossed.

Kaner slinks into the kitchen and gingerly hoists himself up onto one of the stools by the island. He downs one of the glasses Johnny filled with water, and then looks up at Johnny.

“Drink the other two,” Johnny tells him, and Kaner does.

He takes a fist-full of aspirin with the second glass, and then waits for Johnny to come sit down next to him before reaching for one of the cups of coffee Johnny brought with him. He could have just made coffee at Kaner’s, but he knows Kaner only keeps shitty coffee at his house, and Johnny wanted something decent for himself to help fortify him during the conversation they’re about to have.

Assuming Kaner’s not still drunk, that is.

The way he’s hunched over the cup of coffee, inhaling it with his eyes closed, Johnny can’t really be sure. He’s guessing Kaner’s at least mostly sober, though, or he wouldn’t be feeling as horribly as he pretty obviously is.

Kaner’s two-thirds of the way done with his coffee and has eaten three egg Mcmuffins before he startles, staring at Johnny like he’s just spontaneously appeared before Kaner’s eyes, instead of having been sitting next to Kaner for the past twenty minutes.

“What the fuck, dude,” Kaner says, his mouth still full of food.

Johnny says, “Chew before you talk,” before he can stop himself.

Kaner rolls his eyes, hard, but does what he’s told.

“What are you doing here?” Kaner asks, once his mouth is empty.

“Looking after you,” Johnny says simply, shrugging.

Kaner narrows his eyes, shoving the rest of the food away from him.

“I don’t need it.”

Maybe he does, maybe doesn’t, but it doesn’t really matter, so much. Johnny’s figured out something else, either way.

“You want it, though.”

“Fuck you!”

“You can have that too, if you want,” Johnny says, not meaning to, but not taking it back either.

He doesn’t want bullshit between them, secrets and evasions. He wants to lay his cards on the table, he wants to call and see what he’s won.

Kaner just shoves him, though, fist hard against Johnny’s shoulder, and he says, “Fuck you, Johnny. I don’t need - or want - your fucking pity.”

“Kaner,” he sighs impatiently, frustrated that Kaner’s digging his heels in like this, pushing Johnny away when he knows - he’s pretty sure, anyway - they both want nothing more than to strain closer. “It’s not like--! I’m not--”

“Get the hell out,” Kaner interrupts, voice hard, cold.

“What? No - I’m staying. We need to talk about this, Kaner, we need to--”

“Out!” Kaner shouts again.

“Kaner--”

“Please,” he says, not looking at Johnny anymore, his shoulders drooped. “Just go.”

After a few long, painful seconds, Johnny does what he’s told.

\---

They have the day off, thank god, so Johnny can spend the next few hours just driving, letting himself pretend, as long as he keeps moving, that maybe he won’t have to come back. 

\---

When Johnny finally turns around and goes home, he can’t stop thinking about what Kaner said in the car the night before, about how Johnny’s place didn’t feel like it was just Johnny’s, not anymore. How it felt like it was theirs.

Going inside, Johnny feels that way too, like he’s intruding on the space somehow, being there without Kaner, and he starts to wonder if he’s going to have to do more than sleep in the spare bedroom.

He spends a few minutes just walking through the place, touching his things and tracing the steps he takes each day, but he can’t reclaim the space, can’t make it feel like it’s just his own.

Johnny sits down at his computer, and spends the rest of the day looking at condo listings, staring at the screen until his eyes are gritty and his head is pounding, until he’s so exhausted he thinks he could actually fall asleep, even though he’s still all by himself.

\---

When Johnny wakes, he thinks he’s still dreaming. 

He thinks he has to be, because that sounds like Kaner calling his name, and it’s the middle of the night and Kaner couldn’t be here, because he doesn't want to be here anymore, not with Johnny, not in the middle of the night or during the day or any time in between.

If Johnny is dreaming, he figures he can safely take a moment to feel sorry for himself here, to really feel how much he misses Kaner and how Johnny wants him here with him more than ever – more than before, more than he knows how to deal with.

And then he hears it again.

Kaner calling his name.

Yelling it, really, and Johnny knows he isn't dreaming, because when Kaner calls his name in dreams he doesn't sound so pissed off and confused, voice far away but coming closer as he repeats himself.

“Johnny! Where the fuck are you! If you've suddenly decided to be fun and gone out on a bender without me, I swear to god I'll -”

That last part is murmured, mostly to himself, but Johnny picks it up because Kaner finds him then, the sentence cutting off when he appears in the doorway to Johnny's guest bedroom.

Johnny bolts upright, the comforter pooling around his waist and Kaner wolf-whistles, because Johnny is shirtless and Kaner is an asshole.

“Dude, why are you sleeping in your guest bed?”

Johnny doesn't know what to say, and only partly because he's busy wondering why Kaner has shown up in his apartment in the middle of the night and is apparently talking to him again now, after kicking him out of his place earlier on today.

Kaner crosses his arms and leans against the chest of drawers just inside the door, and anyone else would think he hasn't got a care in the world after barging into his best friend's apartment at two AM, but Johnny knows better. Johnny can see how Kaner is careful not to make eye contact with him, is worrying the inside of his cheek with his teeth like he only does when he wants something but doesn't know how to ask for it, doesn't think he deserves to hear 'yes'.

Johnny sidesteps the question and counters it with one of his own.

“What are you doing here, Kaner?” he asks, but he doesn't sharpen it, lets it settle like an offer instead, nothing meant to send Kaner away.

Kaner shakes his head and unfolds his arms, clicks his fingers and turns on his heel.

“C'mon,” he says to Johnny over his shoulder, and Johnny goes.

He follows Kaner back up the hallway but freezes when Kaner walks into his bedroom. Johnny hovers in the doorway, doesn't say anything but doesn't turn away when Kaner starts to strip his clothes off, tossing them onto a chair on the far side of Johnny's room.

Kaner carefully picks the St Louis 'Crybabies' bear up off its throne at the top of Johnny's pillows, and pats it on the head when he props it up against the lamp on the bedside table. He pulls the covers back and climbs into Johnny's bed and lies on his side, facing Johnny. He doesn't say anything, just blinks at Johnny, waiting.

Johnny stalls for all of one tenth of a second, and then he's crossing the room and sliding into bed next to Kaner, moving as close to him as he can without actually touching him.

Kaner turns over to turn off the lamp, and doesn't turn back to face Johnny.

He scoots backwards into the middle of the bed, and carefully turns his face into the pillows at the very same time as he reaches behind himself for Johnny's arm and tugs it around his waist, laces their fingers together and holds their linked hands to his chest.

“Kaner -” Johnny starts, but Kaner stops him, squeezes his hand and says,

“Don't, Johnny. Just ... sleep,” and so they do.

Johnny moves a little closer, brushes his lips against the curve of Kaner's shoulder in something like a kiss, and they sleep.

\---

Johnny’s alone when he wakes up, and for a second he’s so angry and bereft he thinks he really might hate Kaner, more than a little, but then he hears a crash and a string of curses, and Johnny realizes Kaner’s probably trying to make coffee.

He doesn’t even drink coffee in the mornings, except when he’s hungover, but Johnny does.

The thought propels Johnny out of bed, into the kitchen, and there Kaner is, giving Johnny’s coffee maker the finger and hiking his boxers higher on his waist.

Johnny wants to go up behind him and put his hands against Kaner’s bare skin, wants to taste the freckles running up his back, but instead he clears his throat, and says, “Do you get it now?”

Kaner wouldn’t let him talk when they curled up into each other last night, but Johnny’s hoping that policy doesn’t apply to the morning after, too. Actually, he doesn’t really care if Kaner wants it to or not. He’s finishing what he started with Kaner, one way or another.

Kaner spins around, holding a coffee filter with one hand and the tin of coffee with the other. He looks surprised enough that Johnny’s just glad Kaner didn’t drop anything. But if he did, Johnny would have been happy to help Kaner clean it up. He’d take a lifetime of stupid moments like that, wrapped in the chaos and comfort that is Patrick Kane, the only home Johnny’s ever thought he might not be able to survive without.

That’s what Johnny wants, that’s what he needs. Just to be where Kaner is, to be what he needs, and for Kaner to be the same for him.

If Kaner doesn’t like it, he knows where the door is.

“Well?” Johnny prompts, when Kaner just stares at him wordlessly.

“Get what?” Kaner demands.

Johnny shrugs. “Us.”

“Us?” Kaner scoffs. “Dude, there isn’t an--”

“Yeah, there is,” Johnny barrels over him, putting up with exactly none of Kaner’s crap. “There is, and you fucking know it. There always has been, and we might have both been too dumb to realize it until now, it might have taken you turning into a god damn six-year-old for me to get it, but I do now, and I’m not going back. I can’t.”

“Johnny, man, I don’t know what you’re--”

“Oh, you don’t? You don’t know that we need each other? That we want each other? That we can’t so much as fucking sleep without each other?”

“That’s me,” Kaner says, hanging his head.

“What?”

Kaner turns his chin up, held at a sharp, defensive angle, and repeats, “That’s me. What I need. What you...” he waves his hand angrily, tossing some coffee grounds onto the floor, “Let me have.”

Johnny grabs his broom from the front closet, and goes right over to the floor, cleaning up Kaner’s mess. He feels calmer already, just having something to do.

It’s enough for him to keep going. Enough for him to say, “You’re not getting it, Kaner. You have to keep up. You don’t just need me. I need you too.”

Kaner just twists his mouth scornfully. “So what, you need me to need you? Fucking weak, man. Real original.”

“No, dummy,” Johnny says, shoving him a little. “I just plain need you.”

Kaner’s mouth falls open.

Johnny resists the urge to shut it for him.

“I have to sit down,” he says, and yeah, Johnny can get behind that.

He feels like his nerves are on fire, his whole body alight, but he also feels a bit like he needs to pass out. So, yeah. Sitting down would be good. 

Kaner still hasn’t said anything back, and if it’s not going to be what Johnny wants to hear when he finally does, it’s probably better than he’s not standing, anyway. Less far to fall, and all that.

They go to the living room and sit down beside each other on the couch, and Johnny is careful not to let their sides touch the way he wants them to. 

When he finally speaks, Kaner says, “I did it on purpose, you know.”

Johnny knows what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t say anything, just waits to see if Kaner will say anything more.

When he does, it’s reluctantly, his eyes fixed on his hands in front of him. “I told myself I was just trying to get back to normal, leave you alone, have some fun with the boys, but I knew what would happen. I knew I’d get drunk enough that I’d call you, I knew if I fucked up badly enough, you’d have to come get me.”

Johnny shakes his head, because it’s so simple. It’s so simple they’ve both missed it, going on five years.

“You don’t have to fuck up to get my attention, Kaner. You have it anyway.”

Kaner looks at him, uncertain, angry or maybe afraid, and Johnny reaches out, running his thumb along Kaner’s mouth, wiping the frown away, leaving a hesitant smile in its place.

“You always have it,” he adds, just in case Kaner still wasn’t getting it, but from the way Kaner launches himself at Johnny, his tongue swallowing the last half of Johnny’s words, he suspects they’re finally on the same page.

Kissing Kaner is nothing like sharing a bed with him.

It's not familiar and comforting and peaceful.

Kaner kisses like he skates – to leave Johnny playing catch up.

He has climbed into Johnny's lap before Johnny even registers that he's moving.

That's Kaner's mouth pressed to Johnny's, Kaner's _mouth_ open against his, and Johnny wanted this, he's wanted this for longer than even he knows, but the reality is insane, the simple touch of Kaner's tongue to his leaving Johnny shaking and terrified, leaning up to get closer, to get more.

Kaner pulls away when he does, gets his hands on Johnny's shoulders and pushes them to the back of the couch, won't let him strain back up to catch Kaner's mouth no matter how hard he tries.

Kaner licks his lower lip and grins at Johnny, and Johnny fights his hold a little harder.

“C'mon Kaner,” he more or less whines, and Kaner laughs at him, and it's the best sound Johnny has heard in forever, something he wants to lick from Kaner's lips and keep.

Kaner leans down, still holding Johnny's shoulders back against the couch, and kisses Johnny, dipping his tongue into Johnny’s mouth to catch against Johnny's for just a second before he's pulling away again, still smiling.

Johnny is either going to kill him or die himself from the sheer force of his desire to kill Kaner, but when he proclaims as much, Kaner laughs once again, and this time after he's kissed Johnny just enough to make Johnny want more, he doesn't lean away from Johnny until he's sucked a soft little bite around Johnny's lower lip. His fingers clench around Johnny's shoulders when Johnny groans at that, and when he sits back in Johnny's lap Kaner shifts down against him, wriggles just enough to still be able to claim it wasn't intentional when Johnny fucking knows it was. 

Kaner is trying to hide his smile now, has sucked his lower lip into his mouth in an effort to do so, but he's clearly trying not to laugh at Johnny when Johny freezes beneath him, goes rigid against the jolt of desperation that goes through him, because Kaner isn't playing fair and Johnny wants him so bad he can barely see straight – can't see anything at all beyond Kaner's shyly delighted grin and the flex and play of muscles through his biceps and forearms where he's keeping Johnny's shoulders so well pinned, the way Kaner's stomach ripples when he laughs, the long line of his throat and the dip of his collarbones, the waistband of his boxers pulled taut around the frame of his hips that Johnny needs to get his hands on before just the thought of doing so drives him insane. 

Johnny still doesn’t know for sure what the rules are, here, whether he’s allowed to touch yet, or whether Kaner will keep holding him back, only giving Johnny what he wants him to have. 

He risks it. 

He lets Kaner keep his shoulders in a tight hold, but he brings his hands up, pushing them slowly up along Kaner’s legs from his knees, watching Kaner’s face while he does. 

Kaner doesn’t look at Johnny’s hands, doesn’t look away from Johnny’s face for a second, but one eyebrow arches and his tongue appears at the corner of his mouth, the expression saying to Johnny ‘I’ll allow it, I guess’, like he’s waiting to see what Johnny’s going to do before he decides whether he’ll stop him or not. 

When Johnny’s hands find the material of Kaner’s boxers he stalls. He lets his fingers stray up underneath them, thumbs following the curve of muscle up the insides of Kaner’s thighs, and then he pushes his luck. 

Kaner shivers under the touch - his hands falter on Johnny’s shoulders - and Johnny makes his move. 

He grabs hold of Kaner’s boxers and drags them down, just enough to get the waistband down out of his way so he can see the lines of Kaner’s hipbones, the flat, smooth stretch of his stomach between them. Johnny leans in and presses his mouth beneath Kaner’s bellybutton, nips the skin there between his teeth and licks at the sleep-warm, sweat-salted rise of Kaner’s pelvis. 

Kaner gasps, the wet heat of Johnny’s tongue wringing a full-body shudder out of him, and then he’s some strange contradiction of pliable force in Johnny’s lap, his hands fisted in Johnny’s hair and pulling his head back, tilting his chin up so Kaner can kiss him, sucking sharply on Johnny’s lower lip, tugging it between his teeth and chasing the quiet, pleading sounds Johnny makes with his tongue. 

When Kaner pulls away again, he isn’t smiling anymore. 

Johnny gets his hands around Kaner’s hips, gets his thumbs hooked in against the curve of Kaner’s hipbones and drags Kaner down lower into his lap, pulling him in from where he’d moved back toward Johnny’s knees and gets Kaner settled in as close to him as he can go. 

Kaner’s fingers are tracing up under Johnny’s jaw and down over the rise of his Adam’s apple now, and Johnny thinks Kaner must feel it across his fingertips when he speaks. 

“What are we doing here, Kaner?” Johnny asks, and Kaner’s grin returns, sharp enough to cut glass. 

“Well when a boy likes a boy very much --” 

Johnny cuts him off with a ‘tut’, dipping his chin to his chest so he can bite at Kaner’s fingers instead, and when that makes Kaner swallow, his throat working in ways Johnny wants to _feel_ , he loses what little patience he’s been clinging to. 

He wraps an arm around the back of Kaner’s waist and lifts him with one hand under his ass, getting Kaner on his back on the couch and leaning in over him on his hands and knees, bracketing Kaner with his whole body and trailing his nose up along Kaner’s throat, letting his lips drag over the soft, flushed skin of Kaner’s neck. 

“How much?” Johnny asks, and Kaner shifts beneath him. 

Kaner lets his hands settle at Johnny’s waist, pinkie fingers straying down into the back of Johnny’s pyjama pants, and he strains up to kiss Johnny again, to distract him with his mouth and the way he brings Johnny's hips down flush against his own, the rush of feeling them harden against one another more than enough to accomplish that for longer than Johnny would like to admit.

But the rough push of their hips eventually reminds Johnny that they should probably talk about this before they go any further.

“Seriously Kaner,” Johnny says, dragging his mouth away from Kaner's and only mostly regretting it when he sees Kaner's dazed expression and the way his chest heaves for breath and how his mouth is flushed full from kissing Johnny.

“Seriously Johnny,” Kaner mocks, scrunching his nose and smacking his lips at Johnny like he does whenever he thinks Johnny is talking too much or saying something stupid. Johnny wants to be mad at him for not taking this seriously, but he's so happy, warm fondness spreading through him because he's got Kaner pinned to his couch, making fun of him and grabbing his ass and this is more than he'd even begun to hope for, more than he'd let himself think he'd get to have.

“Kaner!” Johnny admonishes when Kaner starts to tug Johnny's pants down, and Kaner freezes, smiling wide-eyed up at Johnny like 'who me?'.

Johnny leans in and kisses him again, because he can.

“What do you want, Patrick” Johnny tries this time, and the use of his full name startles Kaner into paying attention. Kind of.

“Well, Jonathan,” Kaner intones, “professionally, I'd like to make my game a little more physical, maybe bulk up a bit and bring more force to my offense. I could do with winning the Cup another couple times, I'll probably need your help with that ...”

Johnny sighs, only slightly more exasperated than he is amused.

Kaner smiles at him, a real, honest, bright flare of a grin that turns shy then, settles into something personal, something Johnny is proud to get to see.

“Personally, though,” Kaner continues, his voice gentle and lower and stretched tight over what sounds to Johnny like careful, raw honesty, “I think -” Kaner clears his throat, “I think I've already got everything I want and need?” and that's nearly a whisper.

Johnny watches Kaner look up at him from underneath his eyelashes, looks at the way his mouth is set small with something like fear, and feels how Kaner's hands are trembling slightly where his palms are pressed flat to Johnny's sides, holding him down and in, close where Kaner wants him. Here – where Johnny needs to be.

“Yeah?” Johnny asks, and Kaner nods, and then goes right back to trying to get Johnny naked.

“In terms of my very immediate future though, I definitely wouldn't say no to you fucking me in our bed,” Kaner says, mostly distracted by fighting with the drawstring on Johnny's pajamas, but when he registers what he just said he stops and looks up at Johnny, raising his eyebrows like he's daring Johnny to correct him.

“I can do that,” Johnny says instead, and carefully tucks the memory of Kaner calling it 'our' bed away for a time when he has several hours or days to explore every part of that. All the things it means, and how hearing it makes the myriad of ways Johnny thinks he's always loved Kaner settle home in Johnny, back where they belong after all of this had made him pull them out and look at them in a new light, check them over for cracks and bruises. He sees now that they're as perfect as they've ever been, brighter and surer for Kaner's words and the warm vow of his mouth.

“C'mon, then,” Kaner says, and shoves Johnny off for just as long as it takes for him to scramble out from underneath him, and then he's holding his hand out to Johnny.

Johnny takes it, and leads Kaner to their bedroom.

\---

Kaner pushes Johnny down onto the bed and drags his pants off, tossing them over his shoulder and whistling appreciatively when he sees that Johnny isn't wearing any underwear.

Johnny blushes at the admiring scrutiny, and Kaner shakes his head at him, climbing up after him and pressing a kiss to Johnny's knee, one inside each of Johnny's thighs when he spreads his legs so Kaner can kneel between them. Kaner glances up at him before he opens his mouth and lowers it over Johnny's cock, mouthing at the head and dragging his tongue down the length, hot and wet.

There's no real intent there, but Johnny has to stop him anyway.

“Don't even fucking think about it, Kaner,” he says, reaching for Kaner and trying to drag him up the bed by the hold Johnny has on his biceps, his fingers biting into the solid muscle.

When Kaner moves, it's because he wants to, nothing at all accomplished by Johnny's urging hands.

“You don't want me to suck your cock?” Kaner asks, pouting, because of course he's already exploiting Johnny's mindless fixation on his mouth before they've even had sex, and Johnny wouldn't want it any other way.

“I want everything, Kaner, but I want you first, us,” and Johnny barely understands what he's trying to say, is having a lot of trouble thinking thoughts because of how Kaner has stripped away his boxers and sitting astride Johnny, jerking them both off with one hand.

Kaner gets it, though.

He reaches into the back of Johnny's nightstand for lube and a condom and then he pauses, looks at the condom in his hand and looks back at Johnny.

“How long has this been in here?”

Johnny figures now is not the time to put his pride before honesty. They've never lied to one another for the same of something dumb like respect, and they're not about to start.

“Like a year? But I'm sure it's fine?”

“You haven't had sex in a _year_?” Kaner is incredulous.

“I've been busy! And like ... weird over you, so shut up, it's your fault, get over here and make it up to me,” Johnny wheedles.

“All surprise and good-natured ribbing aside, man, this works to our favor. I've been 'too busy' being 'weird over you' too, so we don't need this? We're both clean and have apparently been in a committed relationship all this time without realizing, so--?”

Johnny stares at Kaner. He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out and he just stares some more.

Kaner blushes and his face starts to close off, his expression growing distant and hurt.

“Or not, whatever, I just thought--”

“No no no, yes, absolutely yes, come here, right now,” Johnny babbles, getting to his knees on the bed and pulling Kaner to him, taking his face in his hands and kissing him gently, and then not gently at all.

Kaner's smiling again when he pulls away.

“Cool it, Romeo, there's no need to bust a nut over it,” he says, but Johnny can see how pleased he is, and he wants to make Kaner look like that every single day - happy and relaxed and appreciated - because that's how he should always feel when he's with Johnny.

“You're gorgeous,” Johnny says, because he can, because he wants to, and Kaner blushes again and they're both so ridiculous about this and everything else that it's utterly perfect.

“Stop that, hurry up and fuck me,” Kaner says, playing the request card to spur Johnny into action, probably because he's realized that Johnny will never not give him something he wants enough to actually ask for. 

Pretty soon requests give way to orders, though.

“More, come _on_ ,” Kaner demands, stretching his arms out above him so he can press his palms flat to the headboard and shove himself down onto Johnny's fingers, impatient as ever.

Johnny thinks he could happily spend a while just like this, stretching Kaner open and twisting and crooking his fingers inside him to see all the different ways he can make Kaner react, how Kaner moans for three fingers and grits out groans from between his teeth when Johnny scissors them, but never stops asking for more and pants gasped little 'oh's when Johnny curls the tips of his fingers forward.

“ _Please_ ,” Kaner says finally, though, and Johnny has no answer for that other than 'Yes, of course, anything you want.'

When Johnny finally pushes inside Kaner, his heart stops.

He goes as slowly and gently as he can, watching the careful slide of his cock disappearing into Kaner because if he looks at Kaner's face nothing about this will be careful.

Johnny pauses when he's as deep as he can get, and reaches to jerk Kaner back to hardness again, but Kaner's dick is already filling by the time he gets his hand around it, and when he braves the storm of feelings coiling tight in his stomach, words gathering on his tongue before he thinks to want to say them, and finally looks at Kaner, his heart stutters still in his chest.

Kaner has his head thrown back against the pillows, baring the line of his throat already blossoming with bruises from Johnny's teeth.

Johnny leans down over him, one hand next to Kaner's throat, palm taking his weight and his thumb swiping up through the sweat beading above Kaner's collarbones, holding Kaner's hip with his other hand, holding him steady where Johnny needs him.

“You okay?” Johnny asks, and when Kaner lifts his head to look up at him his eyes are huge, pupils blown wide and his cheekbones flushed pink and shining, his mouth bitten raw. He’s more than gorgeous.

Kaner nods frantically, wraps his arms up around Johnny's shoulders and arches underneath him, tilting his hips for Johnny and groaning when that gets him deeper, brings them closer.

“Ugh, yeah, fuck _yes_ ,” Kaner says, and Johnny is half smug, half just happy to be able to make Kaner happy.

When Johnny carefully pulls out, Kaner's mouth falls open on a groan and he grabs hold of Johnny's hair, his fingers clutching the curve of Johnny's skull and dragging Johnny down to so he can bring their faces together and pant against Johnny's cheek.

Johnny pushes back in and Kaner moans, this broken, beautiful thing that's nothing Johnny's ever heard before, and he quickly repeats the motion, setting up a pace and rhythm to wring that sound out of Kaner again and again.

Kaner is hot around him, tight heat that Johnny thinks would somehow be just as much even if this wasn't the first and only time Johnny's ever been inside someone without a condom, without worrying.

Johnny can't tell if he's the one shaking, or if Kaner is, but Kaner's thighs are trembling around Johnny's waist and when Johnny pulls away to look down at him Kaner is biting his tongue to keep from grinding his teeth together.

Johnny shifts up on his knees a little further, gets Kaner's ass snug in the cradle of his hips and pushes Kaner's hair back off his face, kisses both hinges of his jaw and noses against the stubble there before he kisses Kaner's tongue out from between his teeth, gets their mouths open and then locked together, wet and easy and everything Johnny wants.

He's fucking Kaner faster than he'd like to be, but Kaner frowns at him and growls low in his throat when Johnny tries to slow down, so he keeps the pace, pushing into Kaner hard and watching Kaner's face the whole time, letting heat and need slice through him and doing nothing to pursue it, doing all that he can to make sure Kaner's got everything he wants, everything he asks for.

Things get a little blurry, and Johnny doesn't know how long he spends looking into Kaner's eyes, cataloguing every crease of satisfaction around them, every open-mouthed moan of pleasure and the furrowed set of his forehead when he whimpers. Johnny's moving without thinking, fucking into Kaner in the rough thrusts that he wants, framing Kaner's face in his hands and feeling himself fall apart because of it.

Kaner jerks hard underneath him, his thighs seizing up around Johnny's waist and his feet locking behind Johnny's back, keeping him still, keeping him deep, and when Johnny shifts in even deeper, gets a hand at the small of Kaner's back and digs his fingernails in, drags him just that much more down onto Johnny's cock, Kaner groans and starts to come between them.

Johnny can't breathe, can't speak, so he jerks Kaner through the last spurts of his orgasm and leaves messy kisses across Kaner's chest and shoulders instead, leaning down to bite at Kaner's lower lip, to lick at the corner of his mouth until Kaner stops shaking and leans up on his elbows, turns his face and kisses Johnny square on the mouth.

Johnny sits back and runs his hands down along Kaner's legs, digging his fingers in against muscle to soothe the ache that must be spreading through Kaner’s thighs from being wrapped up around Johnny’s waist at this angle for so long, but Kaner reaches for his hands and takes them in his own, locks their fingers together and holds them down against the sheets, shifting underneath Johnny until he starts to thrust again, slower now, still deep but easy, almost teasing in ways that Kaner wouldn't have been able to stand if he hadn't come already.

Their hands are locked together loosely, and Kaner smooths his thumbs across the thin skin of Johnny's wrists, and looks up at him with such clear, sated _love_ , nothing hidden, nothing at all left that can come between them, and Johnny kisses him again, breathes a sharp gasp into Kaner's mouth and then comes inside him.

\---

They lie still, catching their breath and still watching each other, Kaner grinning bright enough to blind a lesser man, and Johnny smiling back, tentative only for how he's still lost to the quiet, hushed awe of everything that has happened, everything Kaner is and will be for him.

When they have to move to clean up, they're still trading easy touches all the way, Johnny gently pushing Kaner into the shower in front of him and Kaner grabbing Johnny by the hair and yanking him in after.

It takes them nearly thirty minutes to change the sheets because Kaner keeps trying to tackle Johnny down onto the mattress and Johnny keeps letting him.

When they finally climb back into bed, they're both yawning, barely able to keep their eyes open even though it’s only early afternoon. 

Johnny ends up on his back in the middle of the bed, Kaner curled up against his side with his head pillowed on Johnny's chest and they close their eyes and fall asleep.

Until Kaner pokes Johnny in the ribs and says,

“Johnny, Captain Crybabies is giving me the stink eye,” and won't leave him alone until Johnny reaches over and turns the teddy bear around so he has his back to them.

“Happy now?” Johnny asks, and rubs his cheek against the top of Kaner's head, curls an arm around his shoulders and pulls him closer.

He says it teasingly, half-mocking, but when Kaner says “Yeah, I really am,” there's nothing playful about it.


End file.
